Beluga whale, believed to have been used by Russian Navy, spotted off Sweden

A beluga whale discovered in 2019 wearing a strange harness, which earned him suspicions of having been used by the Russian navy, is currently on the west coast of Sweden, an NGO reporting his movements reported on Sunday May 28. , OneWhale. After being seen in recent days in the Oslo fjord (Norway), the cetacean was observed further south in the North Sea, in Hunnebostrand (Sweden), Sebastian Strand, a manager at OneWhale, announced to AFP.

The cetacean was first seen in April 2019 in the Far North of Norway. The biologists who had approached him had managed to remove the harness fixed around his head. This was equipped with a base for a small camera, with the text “Equipment St. Petersburg” printed in English on the plastic straps.

The Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries had speculated that the beluga had escaped from an enclosure, and that it had been dragged away by the Russian navy. Moscow has never officially commented on this theory.

The animal has been swimming south for several months

Beluga whales traditionally live much further north, near Greenland, or in the waters of the Russian or Norwegian Arctic. The Barents Sea and the North Atlantic are strategic areas for Western and Russian navies, which deploy their submarines there.

“We don’t know why he’s moving so fast right now”especially since“it moves away from its natural environment”, underlined Sebastian Strand. The animal had spent three years slowly descending from northern Norway. He has been heading south for several months, for some unexplained reason. “It could be the hormones that drive him to find a partnersays the biologist. Or loneliness, belugas being very social, he could be looking for others.”