Beluga whale was trained to spy
Was the cetacean encountered off an Arctic island a few months ago on a Russian secret mission?
NEWSPAPERS AND WEBSITES went into a frenzy back in April when a beluga whale wearing a harness was spotted in Norwegian waters. Many quickly reached the conclusion it had been sent by the Russian navy on a spying operation, and that the harness had been designed to be fitted with a recording device, such as a GoPro.
The beluga was habituated to people, so it was relatively easy for the Norwegian fishing boats it approached to free it from the harness. This, reports marine scientist Martin Biuw, was labelled as being ‘Equipment of St Petersburg’, adding credence to the theory that the animal – which is more closely related to dolphins and porpoises than great whales – had swum there from Russia.
But Biuw says there is little evidence to suggest the beluga was spying for Russia. There’s no evidence of any camera being attached to the harness, he points out, and the purported GoPro mount might just have been a buckle on the harness.
And though it was approaching fishing boats, Biuw says this is probably because it had been trained to do so in order for its handlers to recapture the animal or recover something it had taken from the seabed, for example.
“From the animal’s perspective, the reason for such approaches is likely associated with expecting a reward – usually food – for having successfully completed a given task,” Biuw argues. “This is identical to methods used with animals in aquariums, or indeed with pets.”
Biuw accepts, as some others have speculated, that the animal may have been used for military tasks such as retrieving undetonated torpedoes or attaching mines to vessels. “But it’s more likely the animal was trained to live in and perform at a dolphinarium or aquarium, perhaps within a sea pen that somehow got destroyed, allowing the animal to escape,” he says.
In the past, belugas have often been held by aquariums, but concerns over their welfare has led to a ban on their capture from the wild in most parts of the world. The only place where it is still permitted, says Biuw, is the Sea of Okhotsk off east Russia. James Fair
MARTIN BIUW is a specialist in marine mammals at Norway’s Institute of Marine Research.
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