The Girl Who Trained Killer Dolphins: The Story of Soviet Stuntwoman Galina Shurepova

Galina did not think long: she quickly packed her things and left with a small suitcase and her little son to Cossack Bay, where not only the military, but also 40 bottlenose dolphins, from which the authorities of the USSR intended to make killers, waiting for him.

The Lithuanian town of Vilkavishkis began to be shelled on June 22, 1941. An exploding shell concussed intelligence officer Alexander Shurepov, and the man, who lost consciousness, was taken to rear hospital. His wife Alexandra and daughters Galya and Natasha remained in Vilkavishkis, which was soon captured by the Nazis.

Someone told the Nazis that Shurepova was the wife of a Soviet serviceman. The woman was taken to work in Germany, and the girls ended up in the Pflaume camp, where the donors were children – their blood was considered especially useful for wounded German soldiers. After the victory, the sisters were sent to a Lithuanian orphanage, and the reunited parents learned that the girls had been burned in gas ovens.

Galya and Natasha’s father refused to believe in the death of his daughters. For years he carefully studied personal records of orphans and managed to find girls in Vilnius by matching birth dates. By this time, the sisters had already forgotten their own names and the Russian language – they remembered their mother only when they saw her photo. So Galya and Natasha returned with their family to Grodno.

After school, Galina entered the Leningrad Institute of Physical Education and already in her third year became the champion of the USSR in scuba diving. From the competition she went to the set: she was invited to star in the film “Amphibian Man”.

Anastasia Vertinskaya did not drown and frolic underwater with Ichthyander – it was 21-year-old Galina. Somehow, she nearly died: her bathing suit snagged on a pin that the fitters had forgotten in the backdrop of the rocks, and could barely free herself. She floated to the surface unconscious.

Galina Shurepova did not pursue her stunt career: she became the first female diver in the USSR and trained male light divers at the Baltic Shipping Company. This continued until, in the fateful year of 1967, Galina was called upon to train fighter dolphins.

At the end of the 60s, the USSR learned that the Americans were training sea animals – they were trying to turn them into weapons. The Soviet army immediately decided to launch its own developments in this area, but no one really knew what to do. So we started looking for someone who knew how to work underwater and who was physically tough. The choice fell on the champion Galina Shurepova.

Galya did not understand anything in training – she just spent whole days in the water, watching animals and studying their life. Over time, she began to try to interact with them – to reward the desired behavior, to combine it with encouragement with gestures of command. Little by little, she developed her own method of learning about dolphins.

One of them, nicknamed Neptune, even fell in love with Galina. The male became uncontrollable after the death of his daughter and his “wife”: he did not obey anyone, tried to break the net that encloses the enclosure… Galina spent hours with him, trying to calm him down . Neptune became so attached to the trainer that he refused to let her out of the water and was jealous of other people and dolphins.

In the end, Neptune managed to get into the open sea. But a few days later he returned to pick up Galina. Only he allowed her to approach him, avoiding the other employees of the dolphinarium. Every time he took a woman on his back away from the sea – a boat had to be sent for Shurepova. He left Hope for Life with his beloved Neptune only five years later.

Galina later admitted: if she had the opportunity to change her lungs into gills, she would agree without hesitation. She called dolphins the smartest creatures that are much better and kinder than people. The bottlenose dolphin killers didn’t work – they just refused to destroy the saboteurs. Nevertheless, Galina worked as a trainer for many years and her technique is still used.

Galina Shurepova died in 2017, aged 78.