A few days after he was found, the advocacy group OneWhale began stating on social media that Hvaldimir had been shot to death, based primarily on photos of his wounds and alleged analysis by vets and ballistic experts they had consulted. This claim spread rapidly through the media:

Regina Crosby Haug, the American filmmaker who founded OneWhale and has been producing a documentary about Hvaldimir, even said that she 'saw a bullet lodged in his body'—a claim that no one else made: