Animal rights groups have said that gunfire killed a beluga whale that rose to fame in Norway after its unusual harness sparked suspicions Russia had trained it as a spy.
NOAH and OneWhale said they had filed a complaint with Norwegian police, asking them to open a criminal investigation.
The white beluga first appeared off the coast in Norway's far-northern Finnmark region in 2019 and was nicknamed 'Hvaldimir' — a pun on the Norwegian word for whale (hval) and Vladimir Putin,
The Norwegian aquatic celebrity was found dead on Saturday in a bay on the country's southwestern coast and his body was transported to a local branch of the Norwegian Veterinary Institute on Monday for an autopsy.
A spokesperson of the institute said that the autopsy report is expected in "three weeks".
"He had multiple bullet wounds around his body," said Regina Crosby Haug, the head of OneWhale, an organisation that was founded to track the beluga, after viewing Hvaldimir's body on Monday.
'Criminal acts' cannot be ruled out
Photographs published Wednesday by the organisations showed what appeared to be bullets lodged in holes in the animal's blood-streaked body.
"The injuries on the whale are alarming and of a nature that cannot rule out a criminal act — it is shocking," NOAH director Siri Martinsen said in a statement.
"Given the suspicion of a criminal act, it is crucial that the police are involved quickly."
Local police confirmed they had received a complaint and said they would look into the matter "to determine whether there are reasonable motives to launch an investigation".
The Norwegian Veterinary Institute told AFP that "if something suspicious were to come up" under the autopsy, "police would be informed".
On Saturday, a third organisation that had also tracked the whale's movements, Marine Mind, said it found Hvaldimir's dead body floating in the water.
"There was nothing to immediately reveal the cause of death," director Sebastian Strand said.
When Hvaldimir the beluga whale was discovered by fishermen off the coast of northern Norway in April 2019, he was wearing a harness reading 'Equipment of St. Petersburg', which led some Norwegian marine experts to believe he might have been trained by the Russian Navy for special operations. Source: AAP / Jorgen Ree Wiig / Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries / EPA
He said that some of the markings were probably caused by marine birds, but at this stage, there was no explanation for the others.
According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, Hvaldimir's estimated age of 15 to 20 was relatively young for a beluga whale, a species that typically lives 30 to 35 years.
Suspected 'Russian spy'
When Hvaldimir was found in 2019, Norwegian marine biologists removed a man-made harness with a mount suited for an action camera and the words "Equipment St. Petersburg" printed in English on the plastic clasps.
Norwegian officials said Hvaldimir might have escaped an enclosure and been trained by the Russian navy, as he appeared comfortable around humans.
In 2019, the hypothesis of a 'spy whale' was fuelled by the strategic location of the Barents Sea, a hotbed of East-West rivalry during the Cold War.
Russia's most powerful navy fleet is based in the Barents Sea, and
Moscow has never issued any official reaction to speculation that Hvaldimir could be a Russian spy.
