It may not be a shark with a laser beam but a whale with a spy cam is still a big threat, both literally and figuratively.
Norwegian fisherman recently came across a Beluga whale that was sporting a harness that officials say could be used to mount a spy camera.
Markings on the harness indicated that it was “Equipment of St. Petersburg,” raising the alarm that the whale was being drafted into the Russian Navy.
Norwegian biologist, professor Audun Rikardsen, shared that the harness was not the type of equipment that scientists regularly use, however he notes that a Russian naval base was in the same area that the whale was found in.
“A Russian colleague said they don’t do such experiments, but she knows the navy has caught belugas for some years and trained them — most likely it’s related to that,” Rikardsen said.
Russain Col. Viktor Baranets even admitted to Russian broadcaster Govorit Moskva that, “We have military dolphins for combat roles, we don’t cover that up.” He continued, “in Sevastopol (in Crimea) we have a center for military dolphins, trained to solve various tasks, from analyzing the seabed to protecting a stretch of water, killing foreign divers (and) attaching mines to the hulls of foreign ships.”
However he downplayed the idea that the whale was tied to such tactics saying: “If we were using this animal for spying, do you really think we’d attach a mobile phone number with the message ‘please call this number’?