Animals will surprise you in a lot of ways, you never know quite what they’re thinking. Kayaker Joachim Larssen was just making his way into the docks in Norway when he noticed a white shadow following close behind under his kayak. Most kayakers would be alarmed that a whale three times as large as their tiny boat was so close to them, but Larssen had no fear of the animal, and luckily had his GoPro recording the interaction.

“It was Hvaldimir and he loves me and my Kayak.” said Larssen. As it turns out, Hvaldimir is a friendly Beluga whale that hangs out in the northern waters of Norway since the spring. He’s always looking for attention and has become somewhat of a local celebrity in the area. No one is sure where the whale came from, but it’s believed that he is an escaped captive from somewhere, since he showed up with a GoPro harness already on him. His name is actually a combination of hval, which means whale, and Vladimir because the joke around town is that he is a Russian spy.

Hvaldimir plays around with Larssen’s paddle and swims around him looking for attention. Larssen gets the whole thing on video from the GoPRo attached to his helmet, but he decides to take it off to get a better look at the whale from underwater. Hvaldimir poses for the camera a little but then snatches the whole device fro Larssen and the camera falls to the ocean floor. All we see is black and assume that’s the end of the video. But then everything starts to move and we can tell the camera is making its way back to the surface.

Though it wasn’t Larssen who retrieved it. Hvaldimir swam back down to the ocean floor, grabbed the contraption in his mouth and brought it back to it’s grateful owner. “When he came to Hammerfest, he had a GoPro harness on. So I believe he fully knew what it was, and just wanted to play around with it.” Normally the government frowns upon interacting with the animal, but that didn’t stop Larssen from giving him some friendly pets as a thank you. “I hesitated to touch him, but he is so eager to get petted that I make an exception due to that he is a lonely whale that needs some love!” Larssen wrote.

It’s clear that Hvaldimir is used to people, and knows that his curiosity most likely won’t lead him into any danger.This isn’t the first time that the friendly whale has showed kindness to the locals. Back in May, someone dropped their iPhone, and just like the GoPro, the whale dove down to retrieve it. He’s great at bringing in the tourists and also lending a helping hand when they need it.

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Source: thedodo.com