Beluga Russian 'spy whale' is so tame it lets people pet it
The whale is so comfortable with people that it swims to the dock and retrieves plastic rings thrown into the sea.
Tuesday 30 April 2019 22:51, UK
A beluga whale thought to belong to the Russian navy and found off the Norway coast is so tame that it lets people pet it on the nose.
The mammal had a harness, with written in English on it, removed by a fisherman on Friday.
It has become a "huge attraction" for locals and is so comfortable with the presence of humans that it swims to the dock in Tufjord harbour and retrieves plastic rings thrown into the sea.
Linn Saether, 37, said the white whale reacts to shouts and when people splash their hands in the water.
She said: "The whale is so tame that when you call it, it comes to you.
"It is a fantastic experience, but we also see it as a tragedy. We can see that it has been trained to bring back stuff that is thrown at sea.
"The talk in this hamlet is that it could have escaped from a Russian military facility or even have swam from St Petersburg, Florida, because of the English-language text."
Marine biologist Professor Audun Rikardsen at the Arctic University of Norway says he believes "it is most likely that Russian Navy in Murmansk" was involved.
Murmansk is the headquarters for Russia's Northern Fleet, the single most powerful fleet in the Russian navy.
But those claims are being downplayed by Mikhail Barabanov, a Russian naval analyst at the Moscow-based Centre for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies think-tank.
He said: "Even if there are military programmes for using marine animals for navy purposes, they are unlikely to belugas, and such animals are unlikely to be released into the open ocean."
He added that he thought "these Norwegian idiots simply robbed certain Petersburg zoologists" whom he said were trying to track whales.
There are now concerns the Beluga whale might not be able to fend for itself as it does not appear to want to leave the area.
The Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries said on Tuesday it was considering whether to take further action to help the mammal, to avoid "a 'Keiko' Situation."
Keiko was an orca who featured in the 1993 film "Free Willy" after being captured and tamed.
He was set free off Iceland in 2002, and visitors would travel from far afield to spot him in a particular fjord on Norway's northwest coast.
Sadly, Keiko was unable to re-adapt to the wild, and died off the coast of Norway in 2003.