Hvaldimir is a male beluga whale that fishermen near Hammerfest in northern Norway noticed in April 2019 wearing a camera harness; after being freed from the harness, the whale remained in the area and appeared used to humans. Speculation that he had been trained by Russia as a spy whale led to his being dubbed Hvaldimir, a pun on the Norwegian label=none and Vladimir Putin.
Appearances and reactions
The whale appeared beginning on 26 April 2019 north of Hammerfest, off the island of Ingøya and near the village of Tufjord on the island of Rolvsøya, wearing a tight-fitting camera harness labelled "Equipment St. Petersburg", and rubbing against boats in apparent attempts to free himself. Animal rescue staff and the fishermen worked to free him from the harness, a fisher named Joar Hesten finally putting on a survival suit and jumping over the side of the boat to loosen the buckles. The whale continued to return to the boats for several days, asking for food and playing fetch, and has shown himself to be very tame, coming when called and liking to be scratched around the blowhole. He later followed a boat to Hammerfest harbour. The Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries and the police urged the public not to feed the whale and to leave him alone to avoid stressing him. There was concern he might become aggressive or might become too dependent on humans, like Keiko the orca. A proposal was made to place the whale in a sanctuary in Iceland which already houses two belugas from China, but since he seemed to be making efforts to find his own food, the Directorate of Fisheries decided in mid-May not to relocate him. The Norwegian Institute of Marine Research recommended returning him to a facility in Russia if he did not become self-sustaining. However, it became apparent a few days later that the whale was malnourished, and with Hammerfest Municipality taking responsibility, the Directorate of Fisheries agreed that he should be fed, and Norwegian Orca Survey began doing so, although there was hope that the feeding could eventually end. People donated funds to feed him. He was later reported to have been seriously ill, and to have been hooked by an angler and injured. Norwegian Orca Survey were training the whale with hand gestures to lie alongside a boat so that he could be medically treated if necessary. After attracting crowds of observers, the whale left Hammerfest harbour in July and apparently had learnt to find food; he was observed several times in August near Seiland, an island located between Hammerfest and Alta. He then appeared in early September in the harbour at Alta, where he showed signs of injury from propellers and people were observed throwing things at him and pushing things into his mouth, and later reappeared in Loppa. Regina Crosby, an American film-maker, is working on a documentary about Hvaldimir and in November was seeking to raise $10,000 to relocate him to Svalbard.
Interactions with people
On 4 May 2019, after a day in Hammerfest, two friends went to the docks to look for the whale; 25-year-old Ina Mansika's iPhone fell out of her pocket into the water and the whale brought it back to her. A video posted on Instagram shows her then scratching him under the chin. In June 2019, he pulled a diver's knife from its scabbard, and played with an underwater drone that was being tested. On 25 September, he was filmed taking a kayaker’s GoPro camera, then retrieving it from the harbour floor to return it to its owner, while earlier that month he was observed playing with a wild herring gull, teasing it into dropping fish it had caught. In November 2019, a video appeared online of a beluga playing fetch with a rugby ball off the Norwegian coast; this may have been Hvaldimir.
Theories and naming
The camera harness and label led to suspicion that the whale had been trained for use in Russian espionage. Both the United States and Russia are known to have military cetacean training programmes, the Russian including belugas. A Russian marine scientist told a Norwegian colleague that the harness was not of a type used by Russian scientists. A Russian military spokesman, Colonel Viktor Baranets, said in response: "If we were using this animal for spying do you think we would attach a mobile phone number with the message 'please call this number'?", but did not deny that the whale might have escaped from the Russian Navy; the Russian naval base at Murmansk is not far away. The Norwegian Police Security Service is investigating. A Russian naval analyst, Mikhail Barabanov, said he thought the whale was part of a zoological tracking project. In late May satellite photos surfaced reportedly showing pens at the Russian base at Olenya Guba that could accommodate belugas and other cetaceans. Because of the Russian espionage theory, the newspaper Verdens Gang dubbed the whale Hvaldimir, a play on the first name of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and the Norwegian hval, whale; on 3 May the national broadcasterNRK announced that this was the winner of their public vote to name the whale, with "Joar", for the fisherman, polling second and "Agent James Beluga" third. Morten Vikeby, a former Norwegian consul in Murmansk, has suggested that Hvaldimir is a therapy animal from a programme for disabled children at the Arctic Circle Padi Dive Centre and Lodge, near the Russian–Norwegian border; specifically, he may be Semyon, who was placed with the centre while still young after being attacked by sea lions and was featured in an article Vikeby wrote about the institution in 2008 for the magazine Fiskeribladet. The harness would be for the purpose of towing a boat with children inside. That institution no longer uses therapy belugas, and Vikeby suggests making use of Hvaldimir to advertise Hammerfest.
