Beluga whale was Russian navy asset

The thriller as to why a beluga whale appeared off the coast of Norway sporting a harness could 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 professional 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, instructed BBC Information: “For me it’s 100% (sure).”

Dr Shpak, whose account relies on conversations with associates 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 sensible whale.”

The sighting was uncommon as a result of the beluga was so tame they usually’re not often seen as far south. It was additionally sporting a harness, which had a mount for a digital camera, and bore the phrases, in English, “Tools 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 reside 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 specific 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 title it was given – Hvaldimir – is a nod to hval which is Norwegian for whale, and the title of Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin.

Dr Shpak didn’t wish to title her sources in Russia for their very own security however mentioned she had been instructed that when the beluga surfaced in Norway, the Russian marine mammal neighborhood instantly recognized it as considered one of theirs.

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

In response to 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 involved.

“I imagine that after 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 blokes on the industrial dolphinarium who used to have him was that Andruha was sensible, so a good selection to be skilled. However on the identical time, he was type 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 photographs from close to the Russian naval base in Murmansk present what might have been Hvaldimir/Andruha’s outdated house. Pens can clearly be seen within the water with what seem like white whales inside.

“The placement of the beluga whales very near the submarines and the floor vessels may 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. However it does have a protracted historical past of coaching marine mammals for navy functions.

Talking in 2019, a Russian reserve colonel, Viktor Baranets, mentioned: “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 unbelievable story doesn’t have a contented ending.

Having realized to feed himself, it spent a number of years travelling south alongside Norway’s coast and in Might 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 clarification has been dismissed by the Norwegian police.

They are saying there was nothing to recommend that human exercise straight prompted the beluga’s dying. A autopsy examination revealed that Hvaldimir/Andruha died after a stick grew to become lodged in his mouth.