Beluga Hvaldimir, a cetacean that was discovered four years ago wearing a strange harness suspected to have been used by the Russian navy, is now off the west coast of Sweden, according to an NGO that monitors its movements. reports News.ro with reference to AFP. .

First spotted in Norwegian Arctic waters in 2019, the name of this white cetacean, several meters long, comes from a pun that combines the word “whale” (PRAISEin Norwegian) with the iconic Russian name “Vladimir”.

After being spotted in the Oslo Fjord in recent days, a beluga whale was spotted further south on Sunday in the North Sea at Hunnebostrand, on Sweden’s west coast, Sebastian Strand of the OneWhale organization told AFP.

After spending three years slowly descending from northern Norway, Hvaldimir has been heading south for some inexplicable reason in recent months. “We don’t know why it’s moving so fast at this point,” especially because “it’s moving away from its natural environment,” the marine biologist said. “It could be hormones that prompt him to find a mate. Or loneliness, because the beluga is very sociable, he can look for other partners,” explained Sebastian Strand.

Hvaldimir is believed to be 13 or 14 years old and was spotted in April 2019 near the Arctic region of Finnmark in the far north of Norway. Biologists who approached him managed to remove the tourniquet around his head. On the straps was a small camera base with the text “Equipment St.Peterburg” printed in English on the plastic straps.

At the time, the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries suggested that Khvaldymir escaped from the pen and was trained by the Russian navy, given that he appeared to be used to human company and tended to approach ships. Moscow has never officially commented on these assumptions.

Traditionally, the beluga lives much further north, near Greenland or in the waters of the Russian or Norwegian Arctic.

The Barents Sea and the North Atlantic are strategic areas for the Western and Russian navies and are a common area of ​​contact for their submarines.

Hvaldimir appears to have been healthy in recent years, feeding on fish attracted to Norway’s large salmon farms, Sebastian Strand said. But the OneWhale organization is concerned about its ability to find food where it is now, saying it has already shown signs of weight loss.