Beluga whale was Russian military asset

The thriller as to why a beluga whale appeared off the coast of Norway carrying a harness might lastly have been solved.

The tame white whale, which locals named Hvaldimir, made headlines 5 years in the past amidst widespread hypothesis that it was a Russian spy.

Now an skilled within the species says she believes the whale did certainly belong to the navy and escaped from a naval base within the Arctic Circle.

However Dr Olga Shpak doesn’t imagine it was a spy. She believes the beluga was being skilled to protect the bottom and fled as a result of it was a “hooligan”.

Russia has at all times refused to substantiate or deny that the beluga whale was skilled by its navy.

However Dr Shpak, who labored in Russia researching marine mammals from the Nineteen Nineties till she returned to her native Ukraine in 2022, advised BBC Information: “For me it’s 100% (sure).”

Dr Shpak, whose account is predicated on conversations with pals and former colleagues in Russia, options in a BBC documentary, Secrets and techniques of the Spy Whale, which is now on BBC iPlayer and being proven on BBC Two on Wednesday at 21:00 GMT.

The mysterious whale first got here to public consideration 5 years in the past when it approached fishermen off the northern coast of Norway.

“The whale begins rubbing in opposition to the boat,” Joar Hesten, one of many fishermen, says. “I heard about animals in misery that instinctively knew that they need assistance from people. I used to be considering that that is one good whale.”

The sighting was uncommon as a result of the beluga was so tame and so they’re not often seen as far south. It was additionally carrying a harness, which had a mount for a digital camera, and bore the phrases, in English, “Gear St Petersburg”.

Mr Hesten helped to take away the harness from the whale, which then swam to the close by port of Hammerfest, the place it lived for a number of months.

Seemingly unable to catch stay fish to eat, it charmed guests by nudging at their cameras and even on one event returning a cell phone.

“It was very apparent that this explicit whale had been conditioned to be placing his nostril on something that seemed like a goal as a result of he was doing it every time,” says Eve Jourdain, a researcher from the Norwegian Orca Survey.

“However we don’t know what sort of facility he was in, so we don’t know what he was skilled for.”

Captivated by the whale’s story Norway made preparations for the beluga to be monitored and fed. The identify it was given – Hvaldimir – is a nod to hval which is Norwegian for whale, and the identify of Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin.

Dr Shpak didn’t need to identify her sources in Russia for their very own security however stated she had been advised that when the beluga surfaced in Norway, the Russian marine mammal group instantly recognized it as one in all theirs.

“By the chain of vets and trainers the message got here again – that they have been lacking a beluga known as Andruha,” she says.

In keeping with Dr Shpak, Andruha/Hvaldimir had first been captured in 2013 within the Sea of Okhotsk in Russia’s Far East. A 12 months later it was moved from a facility owned by a dolphinarium in St Petersburg to the navy programme within the Russian Arctic, the place his trainers and vets remained in touch.

“I imagine that once they began to work in open water, trusting this animal (to not swim away), the animal simply gave up on them,” she says.

“What I’ve heard from the fellows on the industrial dolphinarium who used to have him was that Andruha was good, so a good selection to be skilled. However on the similar time, he was form of like a hooligan – an energetic beluga – in order that they weren’t stunned that he gave up on (following) the boat and went the place he needed to.”

Satellite tv for pc photos from close to the Russian naval base in Murmansk present what may have been Hvaldimir/Andruha’s outdated residence. Pens can clearly be seen within the water with what look like white whales inside.

“The situation of the beluga whales very near the submarines and the floor vessels would possibly inform us that they’re truly a part of a guarding system,” says Thomas Nilsen, from Norwegian on-line newspaper The Barents Observer.

Russia, for its half, has by no means formally addressed the declare that Hvaldimir/Andruha was skilled by its military. But it surely does have a protracted historical past of coaching marine mammals for navy functions.

Talking in 2019, a Russian reserve colonel, Viktor Baranets, stated: “If we have been utilizing this animal for spying, do you actually assume we would connect a cell phone quantity with the message ‘Please name this quantity’?”

Sadly, Hvaldimir/Andruha’s unimaginable story doesn’t have a contented ending.

Having discovered to feed himself, it spent a number of years travelling south alongside Norway’s coast and in Could 2023 was even spotted off the coast of Sweden.

Then on September 1 2024 its body was found floating at sea, close to the city of Risavika, on Norway’s south-western coast.

Had the lengthy arm of Putin’s Russia caught up with the reluctant beluga?

It seems not. Regardless of some activist teams suggesting that the whale had been shot, that rationalization has been dismissed by the Norwegian police.

They are saying there was nothing to recommend that human exercise instantly brought on the beluga’s loss of life. A autopsy examination revealed that Hvaldimir/Andruha died after a stick turned lodged in his mouth.