Vishvas News, in its investigation, found this claim to be false. The viral footage dates back to 2023, when fishermen rescued these beluga whales in Russia’s Kamchatka region.
What is viral?
Facebook user newsphere007 shared the viral video on July 30, 2025, with the caption: “A day before the devastating 8.8-magnitude quake in Kamchatka, Russia, five beluga whales mysteriously washed ashore at the epicenter. Nature speaks first—we must listen.”
Investigation
To verify the viral claim, we checked the keyframes of the viral video on Google Lens. we found this video uploaded by a few Facebook users in August 2023. Facebook page Takia Dela shared the viral video on August 14, 2025 with the caption “Watch them cry. In Kamchatka, fishermen rescued a family of whites thrown ashore. In the Tigilsky district in the north of Kamchatka, fishermen rescued a family of white whales thrown ashore. This was reported by the Ministry of Natural Resources of Kamchatka Krai with reference to local residents. Four fishermen — Andrei Korolev, Vladimir Kochelaevsky, Sergey Umkev and Ashot Ustyan poured water on four adult white whales and one cub for several hours until the animals could not return to the water due to the low tide.
During the approaching tide, the whales returned to the sea. The Ministry of Natural Resources noted that whale discharge to the shore is frequent. This is due to powerful tidal phenomena with large elevations, typical of the northern areas of the western coast of Kamchatka.”
Taking a cue from here, we searched with keywords and found a report on a local Russian website rybak-kamchatky (Fisherman of Kamchatka) that focuses on the fishermen of the Kamchatka region. As per this report published on Aug 18, 2023 “On Thursday, August 10, during low tide, a family of beluga whales was washed up on the coast in the Tigilsky district. Workers from the Sokol tribal community came to their aid.”
For more details we reached out to rybak-kamchatky via mail, in response we were told that the video is old.
The Facebook page newsphere007, which shared the viral video, has around 4000 followers.
Conclusion: The claim that the viral video of white whales shows a warning sign before the July 30, 2025 earthquake in Russia is false. The video is from August 2023 and depicts the rescue of beluga whales by fishermen in Kamchatka.