'Whaledimir' is dead

“We have taken him out of the water now. I can confirm he is dead, unfortunately,” says Fredrik Skarbøvik, maritime coordinator for Stavanger port to newspaper VG Saturday afternoon. 

The Norwegians named him ‘Whaledimir” (Hvaldimir) when he first approached people in fishing boats near the northern island of Ingøya in 2019. The whale was freed from the gear he was wearing, a camera harness stamped with “equipment of St. Petersburg”. He continued west and the whale soon became an attractions in the harbour waters in Hammerfest, Norway’s northernmost town. 

The Beluga whale showed himself to be very tame and used to people. Speculations started about the whale’s origin and what kind of training he had participated in. The Barents Observer could then tell about a military base north of Murmansk where satellite images revealed pens with other beluga whales inside. 

Such pens were seen both near Polyarny and at GUGI’s secret base in Olenya Bay. 

Six beluga whales in pens were visible on this 2019 satellite image from Garyachie Ruchy, near the closed naval town of Polyarny on the Kola Peninsula. Image: Google Earth / The Barents Observer

Whaledimir made big headlines around the world and became a celebrity as he started to swim from fjord to fjord south along the coast of Norway. He even made it to the west coast of Sweden before he returned back to the southwest coast of Norway and the Stavanger area where he died on August 31. It is not known what caused the death of the whale. A necropsy will be conducted.