WHALE TALE

Russia’s Spy Whale Was Actually a Fugitive ‘Hooligan’

A BBC documentary suggests Hvaldimir defected from security guard training.

Five years ago, a friendly white beluga whale approached fisherman in the waters off Norway, and quickly cemented his status as a figure of international intrigue. Hvaldimir, as the whale came to be known, wore a harness that read “Equipment St. Petersburg,” spurring theories that he was not just any whale but a Russian spy whale. Now, however, a BBC documentary purports to have unveiled Hvaldimir‘s true identity: A “hooligan” who defected from military service. Dr. Olga Shpak, formerly a marine mammal researcher in Russia, told the BBC she’s “100 percent” sure that Hvaldimir is actually Andruha, a would-be security beluga being trained to guard a Russian base before he went rogue in the Arctic. “I believe that when they started to work in open water, trusting this animal (not to swim away), the animal just gave up on them,“ Shpak said, declining to reveal her sources. Because he was ”an active beluga," his trainers were allegedly “not surprised that he gave up on (following) the boat and went where he wanted to.” Unfortunately, Hvaldimir died an untimely death—from a bacterial infection, not a state-sanctioned hit—earlier this year. RIP to a legend.