Beluga Whale Wearing Suspicious Harness Dubbed Russian Spy Whale
OutdoorHub Reporters 04.29.19
A beluga whale wearing a strange looking harness was recently discovered off the coast of Norway, and experts think it could be a Russian spy whale.
According to BBC, the whale was spotted by a group of Norwegian fishermen off Ingoya, an island in the Arctic located roughly 258 miles from Murmansk – where Russia’s Northern Fleet is based.
“We were going to put out nets when we saw a whale swimming between the boats,” NRK reports fisherman Joar Hesten saying. “It came over to us, and as it approached, we saw that it had some sort of harness on it.”
A group of experts from the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries worked to remove the apparatus, which had partially worn straps, rusty screws holding it together and a logo reading, “Equipment of St. Petersburg.”
Marine biologist Prof Audun Rikardsen said the harness had an attachment to hold a GoPro camera, but no camera was found. The harness was “attached really tightly around [the whale’s] head, in front of its pectoral fins,” Rikardsen reported.
“A Russian colleague said they don’t do such experiments, but she knows the navy has caught belugas for some years and trained them – most likely it’s related to that,” he said.
Spy Whales
Russia’s military has a relatively known past for attempting to weaponize whales and other sea-barring animals, yet a Russian reserve colonel – Col Viktor Baranets – had this to say about the beluga; “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?'”
“In Sevastopol (in Crimea) we have a centre for military dolphins, trained to solve various tasks, from analyzing the sea floor to protecting a specific stretch of water, killing foreign divers, attaching mines to the hulls of foreign ships.”
Colonel Baranets brings up an interesting point. Could this ‘Russian spy whale’ just be a whale who managed to escape captivity?
Prof Rikardsen, a professor at the University of Tromso, said “belugas, like dolphins and killer whales, are quite intelligent. They are Arctic animals and quite social. They can are even capable of being trained like a dog.”
Britain’s The Guardian states the Cold War-era Soviet Union had a program to train dolphins to help detect underwater weapons and alert their military.
And they weren’t alone in their efforts..
The US Navy also set up a similar program – the US Navy Marine Mammal Program – based in San Diego, which uses bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions for locating mines and other dangerous objects on the ocean floor.
The navy website also states the animals are used to detect unauthorized personnel underwater who pose potential threats to US ships.
The verdict is still out on this one, so what do you say? Russian spy or just a friendly whale sporting a harness?
