STOCKHOLM: An organisation tracking his movements has said that a beluga whale turned up in Norway in 2019, sparking speculation that the Russian navy had trained it because of a man-made harness it was wearing. It has reappeared off Sweden’s coast.
According to AL Jazeera, when he first appeared in Norway’s northern Arctic region of Finnmark, marine biologists from the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries removed an attached harness with the mount suited for an action camera and the words “Equipment St Petersburg” printed on the plastic clasps.
Directorate officials said the whale may have escaped an enclosure and been trained by the Russian navy, as it appeared to be accustomed to humans at the time.
Norwegians nicknamed the beluga “Hvaldimir” – the pun on the word “whale” in Norwegian, hval, and “dimir”, the nod to its alleged association with Russia.
The OneWhale organisation said that Hvaldimir had spent more than three years slowly moving down the top half of the Norwegian coastline before suddenly speeding up in current months to cover the second half and moving on to Sweden.
The organisation said he was observed in Hunnebostrand, off Sweden’s southwestern coast.
BREAKING NEWS: Hvaldimir has left Norwegian waters and is now in Sweden. We are working with the Swedish authorities. pic.twitter.com/9JQpVdcB6T
— OneWhale (@onewhaleorg) May 29, 2023
“We do not know why he has sped up so fast right now,” especially since he is moving “very fastly away from his natural environment”, Sebastian Strand, the marine biologist with the OneWhale organisation, said.
“It could be hormones driving him to find the mate. Or it could be loneliness, as belugas are a social species – it could be that he’s searching for other beluga whales.” Strand said, believed to be between 13 and 14 years old, Hvaldimir is “at an age where his hormones are very high”.
But the closest population of belugas is located in the Svalbard archipelago, in Norway’s far north. The whale isn’t believed to have seen a single beluga since arriving in Norway in April 2019.
The OneWhale organisation’s website said, “Hvaldimir isn’t a wild whale. He behaves like a lost and abandoned domesticated animal. Instead of avoiding people, he seeks them out.”
Russia never officially reacted to Norwegian speculation that the whale could be a “Russian spy”.
