Marine experts in Norway believe a beluga whale wearing a harness that was sighted by fisherman is a Russian-trained military weapon.
The mammal approached boats off the coast of the fishing village of Inga last week and appeared to be actively seeking out boats and tried to pull straps and ropes from the vessels.
Fisherman, Joar Hesten, told Norwegian broadcaster NRK: “We were going to put out nets when we saw a whale swimming between the boats.
“It came over to us, and as it approached, we saw that it had some sort of harness on it.”
Inside the harness was printed the words: “Equipment of St. Petersburg.”
Military-trained whales aren’t as far-fetched as they might first sound – the Soviet Union originally controlled a dolphin program at Sevastopol, but it was turned over to Ukraine after the Cold War.
Some of these eventually ended up in Iran, according to a BBC report from 2000, and a collection of trained creatures — including dolphins, walruses, sea lions, seals, and a white beluga whale — were sent to the Persian Gulf after their caretaker said he ran out of money to feed them.
At least some of those mammals had been trained to attack enemies with weapons including harpoons, according to the BBC, and “could also undertake kamikaze strikes against enemy shipping carrying mines”.
The United States Navy has also trained animals through its own Marine Mammal Program for decades.
Audun Rikardsen, professor at the department of arctic and marine biology at the Arctic University of Norway (UiT), told NRK: “We know that in Russia they have had domestic whales in captivity and also that some of these have apparently been released.
“Then they often seek out boats.”
Russian state media reported in 2017 that the military was once again. training beluga whales, seals and bottlenose dolphins for military purposes, for use in the Arctic region where Russia has recently built a number of new bases.
