(Stockholm) The beluga Hvaldimir, discovered five years ago wearing a strange harness that led to suspicions of having been used by the Russian navy, was found dead on Saturday in southwestern Norway, according to an NGO that has been tracking its movements.
First spotted in the waters of the Norwegian Arctic in 2019, the name of this white cetacean, several meters long, comes from a play on words combining the word whale (hval, in Norwegian), and the emblematic Russian first name.
“I found Hvaldi dead yesterday while I was looking for him, as usual,” Sebastian Strand, founder of the NGO Marine Mind, said in a message to AFP.
“We had confirmation that he was alive just over 24 hours before we found him floating motionless” off the southwest coast at Risavika, he added.
The cause of death is unknown and no visible injuries were found during an initial inspection of the cetacean’s body, Mr Strand said.
“We managed to recover his remains and place them in a cool place, with a view to a necropsy by the veterinary institute which will be able to help determine what really happened to him,” added the specialist.
Fredrik Skarbøvik, maritime coordinator at the port of Stavanger, confirmed the death of the beluga to the daily VG.
Estimated to be 14 to 15 years old, “Hvaldimir” was spotted in April 2019 off the coast of the Arctic region of Finnmark, in Norway’s far north.
The biologists who had approached him had managed to remove the harness attached around his head.
This one was equipped with a base for a small camera, with the text “Equipment St. Peterburg” printed in English on the plastic straps.
The Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries speculated at the time that Hvaldimir had escaped from an enclosure and had been trained by the Russian Navy, as he appeared accustomed to human company and tended to approach ships.
Moscow has never officially commented on the speculation.
He was then spotted a year ago on the west coast of Sweden, and the NGO was concerned that he was managing to find food in this area and had already identified signs of weight loss.
Belugas 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 the Western and Russian navies, a regular contact zone for their submarines.