In 2019, a beluga wearing a harness labeled “Equipment St. Petersburg” appeared in Norwegian waters, far from his species’ normal Arctic habitat, after apparently escaping a Russian enclosure.
Norwegian biologists named the beluga Hvaldimir. They since have tracked him swimming south toward Sweden. “It could be that he’s searching for other beluga whales,” Sebastian Strand, a marine biologist with the OneWhale organization, told The Guardian. Tragically, Hvaldimir is swimming in the wrong direction to meet another member of his species.