by Elena Romanova
[REGNUM.RU] For residents of the coastal towns of the Murmansk region, whales are as much a part of the landscape as the forests and mountains. And for tourists who come here every year, it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience—the enormous marine animals can be seen just a few kilometers from the shore by boat.
One of these excursions gave Stanislav the whale, and later Peter the whale, a chance at life that humans almost took away, albeit not by direct intent, but simply by littering the waters with traces of their fishing activities.
Commercial whaling has been banned worldwide for 40 years. Most species have a special conservation status, and one in four are critically endangered. However, according to the International Whaling Commission, more than 300,000 whales, dolphins, and porpoises die annually after becoming entangled in fishing nets.
However, there is still no clear system for protecting and rescuing these animals at the state level. In Russia, this work is carried out only by enthusiasts, with expert support from biologists, sponsorship from voluntary benefactors, and, to be fair, the occasional, albeit ad hoc, assistance of local authorities.
THE RESCUE OF STANISLAV AND PETER
Today, Russian history already knows two unique cases of humpback whales being rescued from nets in the Barents Sea. Whales don't stay in one place for long. Humpback whales travel thousands of kilometers from the equator to the Arctic Circle to fatten up before the long journey back to where there's no food.
The first rescue occurred in June 2024. A group of tourists on a boat spotted a whale with a green rope embedded deep in its body. The news reached Tatyana Efremova, who for several years has been combining her work as a tour guide with a noble cause—she and her fellow travelers track whales that come to the shores of the Murmansk region.
The rescue operation required several days of searching and the participation of dozens of people of various professions. But since then, the rescued whale Stanislav has returned to the Barents Sea near Teriberka every year. A month ago, he brought with him a fellow whale—a fellow humpback whale, entangled in fishing line. He, too, was rescued and named Peter the Great.
Those involved still don't know whether it's a romantic fantasy—that a whale they'd rescued in the past led a fellow whale in a similar situation to its rescuers, or whether they just happened to be in the same place at the same time. But the fact that the Russian history of whale rescue began on the Kola Peninsula is undeniable.
"We regularly go out to sea to search for whales. We don't just look for them, but also study their migration routes and photograph their tail flukes—each animal has a unique pattern, like a human fingerprint—their 'passport.' We then forward this information to the international Happywhale catalog. Since I'm part of the rapid response team, a friend and I rented a boat and went out to sea to look for the injured whale. We spent five to six hours at sea on the first day, but when fog rolled in, we had to turn back. On the second day, we found him 40 kilometers from Teriberka. The rope was on the front of his body, between his eyes and pectoral flukes. This prevents the whale from smoothing out his belly folds when feeding; it was weighing him down and preventing him from feeding properly, " Tatyana explained.
WHALE ENTANGLEMENT MODEL
She now recalls with a smile their attempts to swim up and free Stanislav the whale using pruning shears purchased at a nearby store. Of course, they were unsuccessful, and they urgently sought help. Tatyana contacted the Marine Mammal Council in Moscow, where they decided to invite Vyacheslav Kozlov and Pavel Tkachenko, the Friends of the Ocean organization from Sakhalin Island, to assist. They have been rescuing marine life for several years.
Meanwhile, money was needed—tickets, food, and accommodation for visiting specialists, boat rentals, equipment, and other expenses. Tatyana approached the local authorities, who responded promptly, resolving all administrative issues. A sponsor was soon found—one of the region's largest companies. Incidentally, the whale was named Stanislav in honor of its then-director.
They searched the sea for several days, and when the whale was found, two vessels were dispatched. One carried rescuers with poles and knives, the other a support team with equipment.
The main task: get close to the entangled whale and cut away the remaining net. The whale had been eluding humans for two days. Rescuers used drones to study the nature of the entanglement. Buoys are usually attached to the loose ends of the net to slow the whale, but Stanislav didn't have a single protruding piece—there was nothing to grab onto. They had to get very close. Meanwhile, the rope was cutting deeper and deeper, and the wounds were becoming fatal.
The situation was complicated by another whale with a white tail—it shielded its companion, preventing people from approaching. Stanislav was rescued almost two weeks after his discovery, on June 15. That day, two vessels spent 14 hours at sea. The whales circled beneath the boat, and at one point, Stanislav surfaced nearby. Rescuer Pavel Tkachenko lowered the pole and cut the net with one movement. To believe their success, the crew had to show each other pieces of rope on a knife.
The whales swam away, but rescuers found Stanislav an hour later, photographing his unoccupied back. Nearby was another whale with a white fin. Since then, Stanislav has been seen in the Murmansk region every summer, looking quite healthy and alert.
The second whale, Petr, was first spotted off the Rybachy Peninsula in the northernmost part of the region on June 5, 2026. Tatyana received a five-second video, and the next day she went out to sea with a group of tourists. They found Petr off Kildin Island and then saw a rope entangled in the animal's fins. Tatyana immediately called Vyacheslav and Pavel on Sakhalin, who had already rescued the first whale.
"We had just returned from untangling sea lions and received information about Pyotr. We didn't think twice; we flew to Murmansk the next day. We arrived at midnight, set out to sea at five in the morning, and encountered Pyotr by seven. He was circling the shore. We slowly followed him, and he stopped. Pavel threw the pole and immediately removed the rope. We didn't even realize it had happened. He snorted and left," recalls Vyacheslav Kozlov.
The entire rescue operation, from approaching the whale to its departure, took a record 26 minutes. Incidentally, Peter was also named after the philanthropist who funded the rescue operation, and also by analogy with the aircraft carrier Peter the Great. The third part of the whale's name was added by a nickname given to him jokingly by locals, referring to the rope entangled around the animal. This is how he is now listed in the international catalog: Rope Carrier Peter the Great.
They watched him at sea for another week, then he disappeared from view, but returned five days later. This is how they learned the rescue had been successful—the wounds were slowly healing, and the whale was recovering.
TATYANA EFREMOVA: "WE'RE PART OF SOMETHING BIG, AND WE'RE VERY HAPPY ABOUT IT."
Tatyana Efremova has lived alongside whales her entire life, but they didn't become her passion right away. She worked as a lawyer, a realtor, and even opened her own real estate agency, but at some point, she felt drawn to nature.
She bought a 5-hectare plot of land in the forest, built a house, and started a reindeer herding business. Soon, people started bringing her abandoned dogs, mostly huskies. Irresponsible owners get tired of their huskies' tendency to run away, and they run away themselves. Word quickly spread that there was a woman in Olenegorsk who took in all the abandoned and lost dogs.
At first, this wasn't a problem, but eventually the herd grew to 30 animals, requiring regular feeding. Then, Tatyana was inspired by the example of an ethnographic tourist complex located near Murmansk, which introduces guests to the life and culture of the Sami, the indigenous people of the Kola Peninsula. She trained her dogs to pull sleds, and business acquaintances brought tourists to her, where she enthusiastically shared everything she knew about the history of her small homeland.
But the 2020 pandemic ruined her plans. Tourist traffic was cut off, but the dogs and reindeer continued to beg for food every day. The owner fell into debt, but was still lucky enough to find a home for the herd and its musher at a large recreation center, where every animal found work, shelter, and food. And Tatyana realized she was interested in continuing to explore and share her native nature with people in all its diversity.
"I trained as a guide at Murmansk University and the Kola Science Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and received a nature guide certificate. In 2022, many whales came to the coast, tourists became interested, and whale-watching tours became very popular. I believe that if you're going to tell a story, the data should be verified. So I started looking for statistical information, but the only one I could find was Norwegian. A biologist friend suggested taking photos of their tails, collecting them, and showing them to tourists to increase people's engagement in research and citizen science, " Tatyana recalls.
Tatyana created the "Whales of Teriberka" chat, which already has 2,500 members. They take photos and videos of the whales they encounter, track their movements around the planet, and name them (incidentally, only Russians are allowed to do this for free; naming whales costs a considerable amount of money internationally). This group once helped save Stanislav, and then Petr.
"Whale research is essential—human activity impacts their lives, migration, and feeding. As citizen scientists, we do a lot. For example, we learned that our humpback whales migrate to Cape Verde, to the Cape Verde Islands near the equator. In winter, it's mostly the females who come to feed, then give birth in the warm waters; we've already carried out two unique rescue operations. We're currently studying the behavior of our whales—where they prefer to spend their time and how long they stay in a particular place. Statistics are crucial in any research; science will never have enough money for all the necessary studies. So we're part of something big, and we're very happy about it," Tatyana admits.
FRIENDS OF THE OCEAN: "FOR US, THIS ISN'T A HOBBY—IT'S OUR LIFE'S WORK."
Ten years ago, the leaders of the Boomerang tourism and environmental club, which had been in existence for 32 years, founded the volunteer group "Friends of the Ocean" on Sakhalin Island. The club's founder was Vyacheslav Kozlov, one of two rescuers, Stanislav and Petr. Vyacheslav is a former rescuer with the Ministry of Emergency Situations and has worked as an ecologist and educator. For the past 20 years, he and his wife and business partner, Valentina, have been engaged in educational outreach, marine mammal research, and tourism and educational projects.
"We were on a marine tourism trip and that's how we met whales. The first one I saw was a gray whale. We were sailing along the coast in a motorboat and saw two giants, each longer than the boat itself, swimming beneath us. We clung to the railings, turned off the engine, and waited for the whale to capsize it—it was terrifying. But it passed by with perfect precision. Whales are very sensitive to people. They only collide with a boat if the person is too fussy. On another trip, I watched whales from a stand-up paddleboard: I was sitting quietly, and beneath me was a huge tail fin. The whale swam very quietly. You have to understand that at that moment, it's not just you who are watching it, but it's watching you, " says Valentina.
The couple began studying information about whales and discovered that bowhead whales, for example, can live for 200 years.
"He's lived so long, seen so much—and now he's going to die from some net. It's heartbreaking. According to a research team studying bowhead whales in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, 36 percent have scars from entanglement. Every year we come to Tyuleniy Island to untangle seals, and over six years, we've rescued 580 individuals. But the number of victims is far greater; these are only the ones we manage to help during a ten-day expedition. Moreover, we've never seen very mature fur seals entangled. Because of the 'collar' the net wraps around the seal's neck, it doesn't grow, and the seal dies within the first two or three years, " Valentina explains.
Sakhalin residents experienced their first cetacean rescue ten years ago. Four killer whales were trapped in ice just offshore. Everyone worked together to save the animals, even though no one else had had such experience. Since then, Vyacheslav and his fellow volunteers have regularly undergone various training sessions, which first came in handy seven years later, when an injured Stanislav swam to Teriberka.
Rescuing marine mammals isn't the story of one or two heroes cutting the rope around an animal's body, but the equal contribution of dozens of people. Unraveling a whale in the Barents Sea took just a few minutes, but it required the efforts of countless people in both regions. While rescuers were on the scene, Valentina carried out a tremendous amount of organizational and paperwork—contracts, protocols, publicity, and much, much more.
"For us, this isn't a hobby anymore—if a whale is entangled, you can't help but go. It's a life's work, a calling, " Valentina is confident.
She recalls a late-night call—at 3:30 a.m. one spring morning, a man stepped out of his house onto the beach for a smoke, heard someone breathing, and saw a porpoise entangled in a gill net. The animal was weak, and they had to hold it to prevent it from drowning or swimming out to sea until it was untangled, otherwise it would have died. Vyacheslav arrived immediately, and several more volunteers joined him that morning.
It's difficult to get Vyacheslav, who has spent many years rescuing people in the most extreme situations and now whales and seals at sea and on shore, to talk about himself, his feelings, and the emotions he experienced during the various stages of rescuing this or that animal. Every question hinges on his life's work—protecting marine animals from human vandalism.
"For me, untangling the whale is a part of my life that's been accomplished, and I need to move on. It's far more important for every person to respect nature. The ocean occupies more than 70 percent of the Earth, and the Pacific Ocean is far larger than all the land mass. For some reason, humans have decided they're the boss of the planet. We're all trying to develop it, destroying it along the way, but we need to rethink our attitudes toward nature. For some, whales are simply objects for beautiful photos and vivid emotions, for scientists—for statistics and study, but it's important to move from the consumerist attitude of 'this whale must give me something' to a creative one. Our work is a drop in the ocean, but it changes people's worldviews and values—because everyone loves whales and empathizes with seals. If they call for help again, I can't not go, " Vyacheslav admits.
An animal can float entangled for months and become infected through a wound, or lose the ability to hunt and forage, ultimately dying. Strapping tape, a durable plastic used for packaging and securing cargo, is particularly dangerous. Often discarded from ships to avoid carrying it, it becomes a deadly threat to marine animals, floating for years without decomposing and capable of scalping an animal upon contact.
Marine life plays with ribbons and other debris in the sea, unaware of the dangers lurking within. This is unsurprising—plastic waste began accumulating in the ocean only half a century ago, and dolphins, whales, and seals simply haven't had time to integrate it into their behavioral patterns, leaving them defenseless against our civilization.
And volunteers can't save everyone. It's high time people embraced a simple idea: if you can't help, at least don't interfere. Stop throwing everything you don't need into the sea. It's not as difficult as organizing rescue operations for these enormous but defenseless sea creatures.