Viral video does not show whales beached in Russia the day before recent earthquake

A video showing beached whales is being shared on social media with the suggestion it was taken the day before an earthquake off the coast of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula earlier this week. But the clip has been online since at least 2023.

The 8.8 magnitude earthquake triggered tsunami alerts across the Pacific, including in Japan, Hawaii, Ecuador, Indonesia, Peru and China, which have mostly receded without reports of severe damage or injury.

In the clip, five whales, including a calf, appear to have been washed up on a grey-sand beach, as two men pour water over the animals.

An X post sharing the clip on 30 July, with thousands of shares, has the caption: “THE ANIMALS WARNED US - AND WE DIDN’T LISTEN

“Just yesterday, five beluga whales washed ashore in Kamchatka, Russia, the exact epicenter of today’s record-shattering magnitude 8.8 earthquake. Nature always knows first. This was the warning.”

Both the clip and stills from it have been shared on Facebook and Instagram with captions making the same claim. Some media reports also share the footage as scenes from earlier this week.

But this is not recent footage. While the clip does show beluga whales beached in Kamchatka in eastern Russia, it has been online since at least August 2023. Four whales did beach in Tateyama in Japan’s Chiba prefecture on 30 July, after the earthquake struck. However, local media reported a marine scientist as saying this was unlikely to have been related to the earthquake.

Miscaptioned videos spread quickly on social media amid significant breaking news stories, such as natural disasters. We also checked a video claiming to show a fatal tsunami shared in the wake of the recent Kamchatka earthquake, but that was actually footage from 2017.

It’s important to consider whether social media content shows what it claims to before sharing it online—you can find tips on how to do this using our guides to verifying misleading videos.