Baseless posts of stranded whales 'warning about Russian earthquake' spread online

Published on August 7, 2025 at 03:43
3 min read
By Sachin BAGHEL, AFP India

Social media users have shared an old video of beached belugas falsely claiming they foreshadowed the massive earthquake that rattled Russia's sparsely populated Far East on July 30. The clip first circulated in news reports in August 2023, when the animals were stranded in Russia's far eastern Kamchatka region.

"The animals have warned us -- but we couldn't understand," reads part of the Hindi-language post shared on X on the day.

"Yesterday, five beluga whales washed ashore in Russia's Kamchatka, which was the epicentre of today's record-breaking 8.8 magnitude earthquake. Nature always knows first," it added.

Screenshot of the false post taken on July 31, 2025, with the red X mark added by AFP

The post surfaced as an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Russia's far-eastern Kamchatka region (archived link).

Storm surges of up to four metres (12 feet) were predicted for some parts of the Pacific with more than a dozen nations -- from Japan to the United States to Ecuador -- evacuating citizens from coastal regions.

The warnings were later lifted, allowing millions of temporary evacuees to return home, including in Kamchatka.

The only reported fatality was a woman killed when her car fell off a cliff in Japan as she tried to escape, local media reported.

The video was shared with similar claims on X and Facebook.

A Google reverse image search using keyframes led to a longer, horizontally flipped version of the video uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2023, with a title saying it shows residents of Kamchatka saving a family of belugas (archived link).

Screenshot comparison of the false post (L) and the 2023 video on YouTube

The video contains superimposed text that refers to the Russian outlet Kamchatka Inform, which reported on August 13, 2023 that a family of beluga whales -- four adults and one calf -- were stranded at the mouth of the Tigil River during a strong low tide (archived here).

The reports said all of them survived and managed to return to the sea on their own during high tide.

While there are anecdotes of bizarre animal behaviour before seismic activities, there is no mechanism that can scientifically explain the connection, according to the United States Geological Survey (archived here).

AFP has also debunked other false claims related to the Russian earthquake here.

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