Russian spy or guard? Mystery behind famous beluga whale unravels

The mystery behind a beluga whale, rumoured to be a Russian spy, found off the coast of Norway five years ago appears to be finally solved. The white whale had surfaced in icy waters around Norway in April 2019 with a harness bearing the words “Equipment of St Petersburg” and a mount for a camera.

Speculation arose that the marine mammal could be a Russian spy. Locals named the whale Hvaldimir, a nod to the name of Russian President Vladimir Putin and hval meaning whale in Norwegian.

Let’s take a closer look.

Russian ‘spy’ whale in Norway

The beluga whale first came to the spotlight after being spotted by fishermen off the northern coast of Norway five years ago.

“The whale starts rubbing against the boat,” Joar Hesten, one of the fishermen, told BBC. “I heard about animals in distress that instinctively knew that they need help from humans. I was thinking that this is one smart whale.”

The mammal was unusually tame and could not even catch fish for itself.

After Hesten removed the whale’s harness, it swam to the nearby port of Hammerfest, living there for many months.

Later, the whale was filmed returning lost mobile phones and “playing catch” with visitors.

As the whale started attracting attention, Norwegian authorities made preparations for it to be monitored and fed.

Rumours about the beluga being a Russian spy grew, but Moscow never officially addressed the claim that it was trained by its military.

A Russian reserve colonel, Viktor Baranets, said in 2019: “If we were using this animal for spying, do you really think we’d attach a mobile phone number with the message ‘Please call this number’?”

The whale’s mystery unravels

Five years after the beluga whale was first seen in Norway, a new documentary seems to have answered some questions about the mammal.

The BBC documentary, Secrets of the Spy Whale, believes it has found the whale’s likely mission and probable path.

It uncovers new evidence that the whale might not have been a spy but trained as a covert “guard whale”.

Eve Jourdain, a researcher from the Norwegian Orca Survey, told the filmmakers, “It was obvious that this particular whale had been conditioned to be putting his nose on anything that looked like a target.”

Dr Olga Shpak, who researched marine mammals in Russia from the 1990s until 2022, told BBC News: “For me it’s 100 per cent (certain).”

Her account is based on conversations with friends and former colleagues in Russia.

Dr Shpak claimed that the Russian marine mammal community had immediately recognised the beluga as one of theirs after it appeared in Norway five years back.

“Through the chain of vets and trainers the message came back – that they were missing a beluga called Andruha,” she said.

Dr Shpak, who also features in the documentary, told BBC that the beluga whale was first captured in 2013 in the Sea of Okhotsk in Russia’s Far East.

A year later, the whale was shifted from a facility owned by a dolphinarium in St Petersburg to the military programme in the Russian Arctic, she added.

“I believe that when they started to work in open water, trusting this animal (not to swim away), the animal just gave up on them,” Dr Shpak explained.

“What I’ve heard from the guys at the commercial dolphinarium who used to have him was that Andruha was smart, so a good choice to be trained. But at the same time, he was kind of like a hooligan - an active beluga - so they were not surprised that he gave up on (following) the boat and went where he wanted to.”

As per the BBC report, satellite images from near the Russian naval base in Murmansk show pens in the water with purportedly white whales inside. This could be the old home of the beluga.

Speaking to the British broadcaster, Thomas Nilsen, from the Norwegian online newspaper The Barents Observer, said: “The location of the beluga whales very close to the submarines and the surface vessels might tell us that they are actually part of a guarding system.”

Jennifer Shaw, director of the documentary, told The Observer, “Our latest findings about the potential role that Hvaldimir had been trained to do bring us closer to solving the mystery. But they also prompt many further questions about what Russia might be seeking to guard in the Arctic, and why.”

Hvaldimir was found dead in September this year in Risavika Bay, southern Norway. Animal rights groups claimed it was shot this was rejected by the Norwegian police.

An autopsy revealed that the beluga died after a stick became lodged in its mouth.

Military training of marine mammals

Russia and the United States have had military training programmes for aquatic animals, such as dolphins and whales .

Blair Irvine, a former dolphin trainer who was part of an early US Navy programme run from Point Mugu in California, told The Observer, “Swimmers create bubbles, bubbles cause noise. The dolphin’s hearing is extremely sensitive and in this context it was unfailing.”

He and his team used to train dolphins to swim like patrols and sound alarm if they heard intruders.

The Soviet Union soon started its own programme using similar methods. Dolphins were reportedly trained to guard the Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea.

The military training centre in the Crimean port city was revived by Ukraine in 2012 before Russia illegally annexed the peninsula.

With inputs from agencies