‘Nature’s Warning’? Video Claiming To Show Beluga Whales Washed Ashore A Day Before Russia Quake Is From 2023

Claim

A video claiming to show five beluga whales washed ashore a day before the massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula on Wednesday, with users calling it “nature’s warning.”

The archived version of the post can be seen here, which has clocked 1.4 million views so far.

Fact

Newchecker ran a reverse image search of the keyframes, which led us to a mirrored version of the viral video shared on X on August 17, 2023, close to two years before the quake struck the far eastern coast of Russia on July 30, 2025.

“In Kamchatka, Russia, a family of whales caught in the tide was watered and fed by fishermen until the waters returned. Here are those moments.” read the Turkish post. A similar Facebook post from October 18, 2024, stated heroic fishermen rescued a family of five beluga whales stranded ashore in Kamchatka’s Tigilsky district.

A further search led us to this Newsweek report, dated August 15, 2023, stating that five stranded beluga whales were rescued from where they were trapped on a beach. “The belugas, four adults and a calf, were found stuck on a beach near the mouth of the Tigil River in Russia’s Far East, local news outlet Kamchatka-Inform reported. The group of whales was rescued from their predicament by several local fishermen, who poured seawater on the mammals and kept them well fed with fish until the tide came back in,” read the report, sharing the same video and adding that whales and dolphins can become stranded both alone and in groups for various reasons, ranging from disease to disturbance by shipping.

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Sources
X post, Hava Forum, August 17, 2023
Newsweek report, August 15, 2023