Incredible moment Russian ‘spy whale’ recovers girl’s phone from the sea and brings it back to her after she dropped it in the water in front of stunned crowd

This is the incredible moment a Russian spy whale recovered a girl’s phone from the sea and brought it back to her after she dropped it in the water.

The white beluga, who was suspected of being a Russian spy before he was found dead in September, is seen in footage from a new BBC Two documentary quietly approaching a boatload of adoring fans before handing a woman a phone into gave his mouth.

You hear several women shout in disbelief: ‘Is this real? Oh my God, it’s real’ when the phone broke the surface of the water.

In the clip, from Secrets of the Spy Whale, the marine mammal nicknamed Hvaldimir – a combination of the Norwegian word for whale, hval, and Vladimir Putin’s first name – bobs its head up and down as people gently splash water around its face.

The 4.5 meter long whale then releases the phone into a girl’s hand before slowly descending back into the water with its mouth open, making it appear as if it is laughing.

Other clips of the beluga also appear in the film, showing it brazenly poking its head through the water in Hammerfest – a town in Finnmark, Norway – as people gathered to catch a glimpse of the famous aquatic creature.

Another footage shows Hvaldimir pulling a yellow float from the sea as he is cheered on by fans.

Hvaldimir’s body was found floating in Risavika Bay in southern Norway in September, and at the time of his death, animal rights groups claimed he had been shot.

But a forensic investigation carried out just a week later concluded that human activity did not directly lead to the death of the animal, which had died after a stick became stuck in its mouth.

An autopsy showed that the stick, 35 cm long and 3 cm wide, was lodged in the animal’s mouth. Police said Hvaldimir also suffered “completely superficial” injuries, adding that “there was no evidence to indicate that Hvaldimir had been shot.”

He was first spotted by fishermen near the northern island of Ingoya in April 2019, wearing a harness and what appeared to be a holder for a small camera and a belt buckle that read: “Equipment St. Petersburg.”

This led to accusations that Hvaldimir was a Russian spy, but the new BBC documentary recently claimed he may have been guarding Kremlin property.

After ten months of investigating the secret underwater agent, the makers of Secrets of the Spy Whale found evidence suggesting he may have been trained as a secret ‘watch whale’ rather than sent to sea to carry out maritime espionage.

“Our latest findings about the potential role for which Hvaldimir was trained bring us closer to solving the mystery, but they also raise many further questions about what Russia might be trying to monitor in the Arctic, and why,” said Jennifer Shaw , the film’s director told The Observer.

As Shaw and her team investigated the mystery, they met one of the last remaining veterans of an early U.S. Navy program and a former dolphin trainer, who explained the benefits of using such creatures as guardians.

Blair Irvine told the newspaper that bubbles are created by the movements of swimmers, which in turn create sound.

Because a dolphin’s hearing is so sensitive, it was a foolproof method of catching intruders – and the Soviet Union soon launched its own program using similar techniques.

A phalanx of dolphins was reportedly used to guard the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea, and while kept in floating cages they were trained to signal if underwater invaders were approaching.

Shaw also revealed to the newspaper that it was clear Hvaldimir had been trained in a similar way as she had seen him put his nose at anything that looked like a target.

This led her to suspect that the beluga was showing signs of being recruited as part of a security patrol – rather than as a spy.

BBC Two’s Secrets of the Spy Whale airs tomorrow at 9pm.