Global Courant 2023-05-30 06:12:08
Norwegian officials believe the beluga whale may have been trained by the Russian navy and used to humans.
A beluga whale that surfaced in Norway in 2019, sparking speculation that it was trained by the Russian navy because of a man-made harness it wore, has resurfaced off the Swedish coast, an organization that tracks its movements has said.
When he first appeared in Finnmark, Norway’s Arctic, marine biologists from the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries removed an attached harness with a mount suitable for an action camera and the words “Equipment St Petersburg” printed on the plastic buckles.
Directorate officials said at the time that the whale may have escaped from an enclosure and may have been trained by the Russian Navy, as it appeared to be used to humans.
Norwegians nicknamed the beluga “Hvaldimir” – a pun on the word “whale” in Norwegian, hval, and “dimir”, a nod to its supposed association with Russia.
The OneWhale organization said on Monday that Hvaldimir had been slowly moving along the upper half of Norway’s coastline for more than three years before suddenly accelerating in recent months to cover the second half and move on to Sweden.
On Sunday he was observed in Hunnebostrand, off the southwest coast of Sweden, the organization said.
BREAKING NEWS: Hvaldimir has left Norwegian waters and is now in Sweden. We are cooperating with the Swedish authorities. pic.twitter.com/9JQpVdcB6T
— OneWhale (@onewhaleorg) May 29, 2023
“We don’t know why it has moved so fast now,” especially since it is “moving away from its natural environment very quickly,” Sebastian Strand, a marine biologist with the OneWhale organization, told the French news agency AFP.
“It could be hormones that push him to find a mate. Or it could be loneliness, as belugas are a very social species – it could be that he’s looking for other beluga whales.” Hvaldimir is believed to be between 13 and 14 years old and is “at an age when his hormones are be very high,” Strand said.
But the closest population of belugas is in the Svalbard archipelago, in the far north of Norway. It is believed that the whale has not seen a single beluga since arriving in Norway in April 2019.
On his website, the OneWhale organization says: “Hvaldimir is not a wild whale. He acts like a stray or abandoned domesticated animal. Instead of avoiding people, he seeks them out.”
The beluga whale wearing a harness is seen next to a fishing boat off the coast of Northern Norway in 2019 (File: Jorgen Ree Wiig/Sea Surveillance Service/NTB Scanpix via Reuters)
Moscow has never officially responded to Norwegian speculation that the whale could be a “Russian spy”.
The Barents Sea is a strategic geopolitical area where movements of Western and Russian submarines are monitored. It is also the gateway to the northern route that shortens sea voyages between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Strand said the whale’s health “appeared to be very good” in recent years as he foraged wild fish among Norway’s salmon farms. But his organization was concerned about Hvaldimir’s ability to find food in Sweden, and they’ve already seen some weight loss.
Beluga whales, which can grow to be six meters long and live between 40 and 60 years, generally live in the frigid waters around Greenland, northern Norway and Russia.
