Norwegian officials believe the beluga may have been trained by the Russian navy and is used to humans.
A beluga whale that surfaced in Norway in 2019, sparking speculation it had been trained by the Russian navy because of an artificial harness it was wearing, has reappeared off the coast of Sweden, an organization that tracks its movements has said. .
When it first appeared in the Finnmark region of Norway’s northern Arctic, marine biologists from the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries pulled out a harness attached with a suitable mount for an action camera and the words “Equip St Petersburg” printed on the plastic closures.
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.
The Norwegians named the beluga “Hvaldimir,” a pun on the Norwegian word for “whale,” hval and “dimir,” a nod to its supposed association with Russia.
The OneWhale organization said on Monday that Hvaldimir had spent more than three years moving slowly along the upper half of the Norwegian coast before suddenly speeding up in recent months to cover the second half and move towards Sweden.
On Sunday, it was spotted off Hunnebostrand, off Sweden’s southwest coast, the organization said.
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 don’t know why it has accelerated so fast right now,” especially because it is moving “very quickly away from its natural environment,” Sebastian Strand, a marine biologist with the organization OneWhale, told the French news agency AFP.
“It could be hormones driving him to find a mate. Or it could be loneliness, as belugas are a very social species; he could be looking for other beluga whales.” Believed to be between 13 and 14 years old, Hvaldimir is “at an age where his hormones are really high,” Strand said.
But the closest beluga population is in the Svalbard archipelago in the far north of Norway. The whale is not believed to have seen a single beluga since it arrived in Norway in April 2019.
On your websitesays the organization OneWhale, “Hvaldimir is not a wild whale. He behaves like a lost or abandoned domesticated animal. Instead of avoiding people, he seeks them out.”
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 never issued any official reaction to Norwegian speculation that the whale could be a “Russian spy”.
The Barents Sea is a strategic geopolitical area where Western and Russian submarine movements are controlled. It is also the gateway to the Northern Route which shortens sea journeys between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Strand said the whale’s health “seemed to be very good” in recent years, foraging for wild fish in Norway’s salmon farms. But his organization was concerned about Hvaldimir’s ability to find food in Sweden, and they already noticed some weight loss.
Beluga whales, which can reach six meters (20 feet) in size and live between 40 and 60 years, generally inhabit the icy waters around Greenland, northern Norway and Russia.
