Dr. Shpak did not want to name her sources in Russia for their own safety, but said she was told that when the beluga surfaced in Norway, the Russian marine mammal community immediately identified it as one of their own.
“A message came through the network of veterinarians and trainers that a beluga named Andrukha was missing,” she says.
Andruga/Hvaldimir was first captured in 2013 in the Sea of Okhotsk in the Russian Far East, according to Dr. Shpak. A year later, he was transferred from a facility owned by a dolphinarium in St. Petersburg to a military program in the Russian Arctic, where his trainers and veterinarians stayed in touch.
“I believe that when they started working in open water, trusting that animal (not to swim), the animal just gave up on them,” she says.
“What I’ve heard from the guys at the commercial dolphinarium that have had him is that Andruha is smart, so he’s a good choice for training. But at the same time he was kind of a hooligan – an active beluga – so they were not surprised that he gave up (watching) the boat and went where he wanted.’
