A beluga whale speculatively claimed as spying for the Russian military has been spotted in Swedish waters, after first appearing in Norway four years ago.
The white male cetacean has spent the last three years tracking around Norway before it was monitored on Sunday near Hunnebostrand, off Sweden's south-western coast.
It first captured attention in 2019 when Norwegian fisherman sighted the tame whale with an unusual tight harness strapped around its upper body.
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The Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries said "Equipment St Petersburg" was written on the harness strap, which featured a mount for an action camera.
At the time, directorate spokesman Joergen Ree Wiig said people in Norway's military had shown "great interest" in the harness.
The clips on the harness also read "Equipment St. Petersburg," contributing to a theory that the whale came from Murmansk, Russia, and was trained by the Russian navy.
Russian authorities did not confirm or deny the speculation.
According to the BBC, an investigation by Norway's domestic intelligence agency found "the whale is likely to have been part of a Russian research program".
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union did operate military programs which trained seals and dolphins to detect underwater weapons.
The US did the same, training dolphins to use powerful sonar to find threats.
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The Barents Sea, where the beluga has been swimming for at least four years, is a secluded part of the Arctic Ocean, divided between Norway and Russia.
It is of paramount importance to both countries, and Moscow views the Arctic as an ideal deployment area for high-tech weapon systems.
Russia has major military facilities in and around Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula, in the far northwest of the country.
Speaking in 2019, Audun Rikardsen, a professor at the Department of Arctic and Marine Biology at the Arctic University of Norway, said he believed "it is most likely that (the) Russian Navy in Murmansk" is involved.
"This is a tame animal that is used to get food served so that is why it has made contacts with the fishermen," he said.
Norwegians have nicknamed the beluga "Hvaldimir" – combining the word for whale, hval, with a play on the unproven theories about Russia.
A marine biologist who has been surveilling Hvaldimir, estimated to be around 14 years old, noted it had dramatically increased its swimming speed recently.
"We don't know why he has sped up so fast right now," Sebastian Strand told AFP.
"It could be hormones driving him to find a mate," he said.
"Or it could be loneliness as Belugas are a very social species - it could be that he's searching for other Beluga whales."
Strand said the whale was moving "very quickly away from his natural environment".
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