Has a creature surfacing in arctic waters
been primed for a sinister purpose?
You can train them.
But you can't totally control them.
Is there a legendary monster lurking off america's coastline
capable of taking down a ship?
This must have been an incredibly strong creature.
And how did a man survive for 438 days
adrift on the pacific ocean?
You are not only at the mercy of the sea.
You are at the mercy of the gods.
The underwater realm is another dimension.
It's a physically hostile place,
where dreams of promise can sink into darkness.
I'm jeremy wade.
I'm searching the world to bring you the most iconic
and baffling underwater mysteries known to science.
Shipwrecks can't just disappear.
Or can they?
It's a dangerous, unexplored frontier
that swallows evidence...
We know more about the face of mars
than we do our deepest oceans.
Where unknown is normal, and understanding is rare.
Captions by vitac... www.Vitac.Com
captions paid for by discovery communications
I've spent decades tracking down underwater creatures
all over the world,
and as a general rule, they don't want to be found.
Animals in the wild keep their distance.
So when reports surface from the arctic waters of norway
of a large marine mammal mysteriously investigating
boats, alarm bells start ringing.
April 26, 2019... Hammerfest, norway.
Researchers conducting a government fishing survey
are surprised by the mysterious appearance
of a large marine mammal near their boat.
As the white animal approaches,
they realize it's a beluga whale...
Something rarely seen in spring norwegian waters.
To make things even more unusual,
this beluga whale seems to be friendly.
Naturally free beluga,
or any citation, don't come to humans.
They're inquisitive, but they'll always keep distance.
It'll never be right up to the side of the boat.
Stranger still is the fact that this beluga
has something attached to its body.
Not only was this an unusual whale in that
it was interested in them, but it also had a harness on.
To add to the mystery of this beluga whale,
where did it come from?
Did it escape?
Did it just say, "I want to be free"?
Marine mammals have been known to escape from captivity,
and this beluga's ease around the researchers
could be a sign that it's been raised by people.
It meets humans again, and it's something it's conditioned.
"that's where the food comes from. I'm safe with them."
animals go for the easiest source of food.
Beluga whales are kept in captivity in aquaria
and marine parks worldwide, but not in norway
or anywhere else in scandinavia.
I think the evidence is pretty clear
that it's been raised by humans.
So, the question, then, is, which humans?
The norwegians decide to investigate further.
And when they study the beluga's harness,
they discover two camera mounts.
Could these have been fitted by wildlife researchers?
Keen to work out where the beluga has come from,
local experts come up with an idea.
The only way we're gonna find out who is behind this
is to track this whale.
The beluga is fitted with a satellite tracker
in the hope that it will head back home.
But after several weeks of monitoring,
the data shows no significant movement.
The whale is staying put.
The tracker does, however, reveal some new information.
The tracking of the whale has shown two things.
One... it doesn't seem to have the ability
to hunt and feed on its own.
And two... It doesn't communicate
with other belugas,
suggesting it doesn't have those social aspects
that it would've learned if it had been raised in the wild.
The animal's inability to feed itself and lack of social skills
further points to a life spent in captivity.
It could be it's the first time it's been allowed out.
Researchers turn their attention
back to the only piece of hard evidence they have...
The harness.
Examining the straps, they discover a decisive clue.
The fact that the harness says "st. Petersburg,"
suggests that it is a beluga trained in russia.
Why would the russians be putting a harness on a beluga?
The russian border is less than 200 miles away,
and the russians have a track record
in training marine mammals.
They have guard animals that guard an area in floating pens.
They have search-and-recovery animals.
Seals have been trained to locate mines and lost ordnance,
and dolphins have been tasked with taking out enemy targets.
They parachute them down.
The harnesses, as they hit the water, release.
What would happen is that they would have
a trigger on the beak,
and an explosive pack on the dorsal fin.
So, then, they would swim up to the boat.
And five of these animals touching the boat...
Up it goes in flames.
Such methods were developed during the cold war,
and, many thought, ended with it.
But recent u.S. Navy spending
suggests that they continue to this day.
The military have always been interested in the potential
for marine mammals to assist them in various ways.
And in fact, the military still fund
a huge amount of research on marine mammals to this day.
If the americans are doing it, then, surely, the russians
are gonna still be doing it, as well.
So, is the beluga whale found in norway
a specialist russian underwater operative?
You can train them.
You can tame them.
But you can't totally control them.
200 miles east of where the beluga was found
is the russian military base of murmansk.
And recent satellite images reveal something shocking
hidden among the russian ships.
Analysts believe that these large octagonal shapes
are floating animal pens.
Could the beluga whale have escaped
from this top-secret military facility?
When a mystery beluga whale is found in norwegian waters
wearing a harness with camera mounts,
there are suspicions that the animal could be
a trained russian underwater operative.
But could this single animal
be evidence of a larger military force?
The whale seems to have been on some kind of
surveillance mission.
Norway is basically on the forefront of nato,
front lines with russia.
The arctic is opening up.
As sea ice melts, the arctic is becoming more accessible,
and its resources are becoming more and more sought after.
Every year, as the ice recedes, military forces are moving in,
and the russians are at the forefront.
Some fear that belugas may be a new part of the russian arsenal.
There's nothing that a beluga can do that a dolphin can't do.
But a beluga can live in arctic waters.
The beluga's echolocation can actually penetrate
up to a meter through sand and mud.
They can go places, and not be noticed, unlike rovs or aovs.
They can travel long distances
without having to take breaks, or to be recharged.
Could that beluga whale be agent double-0 blubber?
One critical factor suggests not.
Training secret agents, human or animal,
requires a major investment of time and money.
If it was military, the russians would've been there,
and they would've taken it back.
So, the whale's origin and purpose remain a mystery.
But one thing is for sure...
This suspected spy has been brought in from the cold.
It's been adopted by locals,
who have named the beluga "hvaldimir,"
a pun on the norwegian for "whale"
and the name of russia's president, vladimir putin...
Himself once an undercover soviet agent.
Most searches for lost mariners
continue for a matter of days or weeks.
After that, the missing are presumed dead.
But how long can you survive alone at sea?
The seemingly miraculous 14-month survival
of a central american fisherman
calls into question everything we thought we knew.
January 30th, 2014.
Reports emerge from a tiny stretch of islands
in the central pacific
of a mysterious foreigner coming ashore with a small boat.
The marshall islands are a remote cluster of islands
in the pacific.
The fact that there would be an individual on the beach,
in a really bad way, is really remarkable.
The man's name is jose alvarenga,
and the story he tells his rescuers
is relayed around the world.
He came off the coast of mexico,
a very small 24-foot fiberglass vessel,
and that was almost a year and a half ago.
A fishing trip that was meant to last just a few days
ended up lasting 438.
How is it that he survived that long?
Surviving the pacific adrift in a small boat
for this length of time would be a first.
It's inconceivable that a human being would be able to do that.
Alvarenga describes an incredible journey
from mexico to the marshall islands,
across half the width of the pacific.
But could a man survive for 14 months
alone in the largest ocean on the planet?
It's crazy to survive that long at sea,
because you have to imagine
that the open ocean is a type of desert.
The pacific ocean is massive.
It's an unbelievably big space.
According to alvarenga, when he sets out on his fishing trip,
he has supplies for just a few days.
It was supposed to be an overnight trip
in a small, open boat.
And then, he encountered bad weather, and a bad storm.
The fisherman's boat is pulled out to sea,
and most of his supplies are swept overboard.
Before alvarenga gets out of range,
he's able to radio his boss, to warn him of his predicament.
He's out there with no engine, with no oars,
no means of propulsion,
and he's basically left to float.
Being lost at sea is probably one of the most lonely things
in the universe.
You are not only at the mercy of the sea.
You are at the mercy of the gods.
His story is certainly mysterious,
and many people don't believe it,
because it's almost unthinkable, what he's telling them.
And when alvarenga's account is put under scrutiny,
shocking details start to emerge.
He's out there on a boat with nothing.
How do you survive that?
It's literally phenomenal.
In 2012, fisherman jose alvarenga
sets out on a small boat
from the coast of southern mexico.
14 months later,
he turns up in the marshall islands,
6,000 miles to the west.
Can he really have survived the open ocean for so long?
It's certainly theoretically possible,
according to scientist models and current understanding,
that he could've reached the marshalls.
The pacific ocean, there's the north pacific gyre.
If you left mexico, headed a little south,
you catch the trade winds and the currents,
and they will push you all the way over.
Boom.
But many people following the story
question the truth of alvarenga's account.
After such an ordeal, how could the fisherman look so healthy?
He looks a little, you know, plump around the face.
But as some experts are keen to point out,
sometimes, looks can be deceiving.
When you live through that type of famine,
your body kind of holds, or retains, liquids, or fluids,
and it gives you a plump appearance
although you're literally starving.
He's bloated because of his malnutrition.
Actually, for many months,
he would've probably looked emaciated,
and even, possibly, skeletal.
Doubts remain, however, about how alvarenga
could have found enough food and water to survive.
In most cases, people adrift in the pacific
last only a matter of days.
Filming off the northern coast of australia in 2015,
I encountered a fisherman
who'd become stranded on a barren tropical island.
This is an uninhabited island.
And we, first of all, saw a cooler on the rocks.
And then, one of us spotted, there's somebody there.
There's somebody there.
It was sheer luck that we came across him in time.
The castaway had run out of water,
and after 2 days marooned under the fierce sun,
he was facing death from dehydration.
So how did alvarenga find enough water to survive for 438 days?
The general rule of thumb is that... it's the 3-day rule.
You know, without water, after 3 days, you know, you'll die.
So, how did he manage?
Drinking seawater can be deadly to humans
because our humans can't process the amount of salt it contains.
Alvarenga needed fresh water to stave off dehydration,
so he claims he fished dozens of plastic bottles
out of the ocean,
and used them to catch rainwater.
But when his supplies ran out,
he was forced to resort to desperate measures.
As well as water, alvarenga would've needed regular food.
The boat would've become its own microcosm
that there would have been algae, and plankton,
and barnacles building up on the bottom,
and that in itself would've attracted his food.
If he's leaving off of the entire fish,
not only consuming the flesh,
but consuming all of the internal organs,
he's getting that nutrients, and he's getting that fluid,
and that it would be enough to sustain him.
But one detail of his epic ordeal
is perhaps the toughest to swallow.
When he started out on his 2-day fishing trip,
jose alvarenga was not alone.
Castaway jose alvarenga claims to have spent 14 months
adrift in the pacific ocean.
When he was found, he was alone,
but it turns out that, when he set sail, he had a companion.
He actually had a fishing partner.
But unfortunately, the fishing partner didn't survive.
He claims that his partner couldn't deal with the stress,
and had basically stopped eating,
and therefore, shut down, and died.
Alvarenga says he kept speaking to his deceased friend for days,
until he realized he must let him go, and buried him at sea.
But the dead man's family claim otherwise.
They accuse alvarenga of resorting to cannibalism.
This would not be a first.
There are stories of whalers
who have been lost at sea in the pacific,
and had to resort to cannibalism,
in the 19th century.
It's impossible for anybody to speculate
what they would do in that situation.
Did he kill and cannibalize his partner?
The only person that knows is the fisherman himself.
A complete physical examination of alvarenga
reveals symptoms of anemia,
possibly the result of vitamin deficiencies
caused by prolonged starvation.
For supporters, it's proof his ordeal really happened.
Some people say this is an impossible journey.
No. No. It's not at all.
This man obviously had the constitution
to survive 438 days.
Yeah, it could have happened.
An unbelievable story or a story of unbelievable endurance?
For many, the jury is still out.
But what nobody denies is that, sometimes,
the battle to be believed
can be every bit as challenging as the battle to survive.
The annals of seafaring are full of stories
of mysterious creatures from the deep.
Today, such reports are much more rare.
So, when one does surface,
evoking the legend of the greatest sea monster
of them all... The mighty kraken...
It demands our attention.
January 12, 2003.
Veteran yachtsman olivier de kersauson
is attempting to win the jules verne trophy
for the fastest circumnavigation of the world by sail.
There's a relatively unknown story of this sailboat,
the geronimo, that was in a race.
The 110-foot trimaran geronimo...
The largest racing yacht of its kind...
Is making good progress through the north atlantic,
but not far from the portuguese island of madeira,
it suddenly loses speed.
The boat dropped from 24 knots down to 11.
It slowed right down.
Unable to determine what's caused this deceleration,
the crew inspect below the waterline.
They think something must be wrong with the vessel.
The first mate goes below, and peers through a porthole.
What he reports is something stuck to the rudder
bigger than his leg.
He can't believe his eyes.
Some kind of tentacled beast is wrapped around the vessel.
This must have been an incredibly strong creature.
Armed with only boat hooks and pocket knives,
the crew try to force the animal to let go.
But after an hour of struggle, the creature is still attached.
The captain orders the sails to be lowered.
And as the ship comes to a halt,
the underwater attacker releases its grip,
and vanishes into the deep.
The captain gets a good look at the creature,
and estimates it to be 10 meters long.
An encounter with a 30-foot tentacled monster of this mass
is extremely rare.
He says he's never seen anything like it.
The incident leaves the crew in a state of shock.
What was the mysterious creature that attacked their boat?
The encounter has echoes of ancient sea stories.
Has a legend of the deep resurfaced?
Throughout history, sailors have always
encountered animals at sea
that they didn't know what to make of, and that they feared.
We don't know what these animals really were,
or whether they even existed at all
outside of the imagination of these sailors.
There is one fabled beast whose name alone
was enough to terrify hearty sailors for centuries.
The kraken, the breaker of ships,
large creatures that would pull ships down to their deaths.
The kraken has always been assumed to be a myth,
but could there be a real-world creature behind the legend?
There are tentacled titans out there.
I've come face-to-face with the giant pacific octopus,
the largest of the octopus family.
Its 20-foot arm span is impressive,
but it's no ship-breaker.
I've also encountered another another potential suspect...
Squid.
Voracious deep-sea predators.
This humboldt squid has a powerful beak
made of one of the hardest substances in the animal world,
and a bite force comparable to a lion.
Quite an impressive beast.
Going back.
The humboldt squid has the aggression
of the terrifying kraken, but not the size.
There are, however, much bigger squid out there.
There's been evidence of giant squid
without actual direct observations.
And that evidence comes from their primary predator,
the sperm whale.
On their deep dives to over 4,000 feet,
which can last for up to 45 minutes,
sperm whales are known to prey on giant squid.
Most of the early evidence
actually came from just pieces of squid
that were found in the stomachs of sperm whales,
or from the scars on the whales themselves...
These giant sucker marks from the battles
between the squid and the whales.
With only rare sightings and occasional physical evidence,
it's hard to fathom the potential size of this beast.
We know giant squid get big.
We just don't know how big they get.
If you're gonna fight a sperm whale, you better be big.
Just how big giant squid can grow
is one of the great deep-ocean mysteries.
But a new science involving a remarkable national phenomenon
could provide the answer.
Bioluminescence is biologically produced light,
and in the deep pelagic zone,
80% of all animals are bioluminescent.
This strange light-producing property
inspired a team of scientists, led by dr. Edith widder,
to attempt something unique...
Attracting the elusive giant squid
using a lure made of l.E.D. Lights.
Her theory was that, if we can recreate the light sequence
that these squid prey make,
you could potentially use that to attract giant squid.
This extraordinary footage, captured by dr. Widder's team
2,300 feet down off the coast of japan, astounded biologists.
This clip is incredible because we're seeing this squid
in its natural habitat in the deep sea.
It's never been done before.
The footage is a first.
But the estimated size of the squid
is just 14 feet long... Half the size of the beast
that attacked the racing yacht geronimo.
But dr. Widder is not deterred.
In 2019, she relocates her search
to the gulf of mexico, 100 miles off the coast of louisiana.
Her team has developed the electronic lure
to mimic the light patterns of the atolla deep-sea jellyfish,
which attracts giant squid.
And what rises from the abyss
single-handedly resurrects the myth of the kraken.
When a huge tentacled creature
envelopes a racing yacht in the atlantic,
it revives stories of the kraken.
Could the giant squid be the real animal
behind this recent story and the ancient legend?
Off the southern coast of the united states,
a revolutionary lure that mimics bioluminescent creatures
is being used as bait to catch, on camera, the stuff of legends.
We're visual animals,
and so, when humans have gone down to explore the deep sea,
traditionally, we go down and shine these great lights,
so that we can see everything.
But in reality, it probably scares a lot of things away.
To avoid this, dr. Widder's team
use infrared cameras to penetrate the darkness,
allowing them to see, but not disturb,
the creatures that come to investigate the electronic bait.
Hours and hours of darkness,
with maybe the occasional flash of something going by.
And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, come these tentacles.
It's massive.
This giant squid is taller than a two-story house,
easily big enough to take on the racing trimaran geronimo.
So could this be the legendary kraken, breaker of ships?
We just now know they're there.
So, it's answered one question.
It's opened up about a bazillion more.
Deep-water diving can be deadly,
and I've had glimpses of what can go wrong.
When diving deaths happen,
their causes are often lost beneath the waves.
So when the decapitated corpse of a diver
is discovered off the coast of England
at the height of the cold war,
there are many theories about what or who may have killed him.
Can new analysis of the evidence
solve the mystery of the headless frogman?
June 9th, 1957...
Chichester harbour, on the south coast of England.
The crew of a commercial fishing boat
make a gruesome discovery...
A swollen mass in the water.
It can only be one thing.
A body in a wet suit, missing its head and its hands.
Preliminary analysis of the rubber-suited torso reveals
it may have been submerged for many months.
And diving fins attached to the rotting feet
indicate the body is a frogman.
But who is this mysterious dead diver?
All we actually have is the body,
so, if we can understand the body,
maybe we can say something about the mystery.
The autopsy report raises many questions.
Why are the diver's head and hands missing?
Have they been eaten by fish,
cut off by an unfortunate boating accident,
or has there been foul play?
Typically, when you find only a torso
missing the head and the hands,
this is an effort to try to hide the identity of the victim.
Investigators are baffled.
They are unable to match dental records or fingerprints,
or even determine how long the body has been in the water.
How can you actually recognize a corpse
if it doesn't have a head and hands?
When authorities comb local files going back over a year,
they discover a possible victim.
And a small scar above the corpse's left knee
leads investigators to conclude that the body
is that of retired military diver lionel buster crabb.
Buster crabb was a frogman.
We're talking about soldiers
that are creme de la creme of the underwater commandos.
Crabb, it turns out, was a scuba-diving pioneer
who served with distinction during world war ii.
As a demolition frogman,
he was involved in numerous dangerous underwater missions.
The navy frogmen during world war ii
were the elite of the elite.
Combining the kind of rudimentary diving technology
with what was essentially underwater bomb disposal.
Crabb officially retired from the navy after the war
to become a commercial diver.
He was a treasure hunter.
He was doing a whole lot of other things.
But he wasn't supposed to be doing anything
related to the military anymore.
But when investigators study the equipment
recovered with the corpse,
they notice that the dive fins are military issue.
So, on the day that he died,
was crabb back working for the armed forces?
A royal navy report released weeks later
suggests that this is the case.
The navy puts out an official notice that he's missing,
presumed dead, that there was an apparent accident
related to testing out new dive equipment.
The idea that war hero crabb was testing new equipment
for the navy seems plausible.
But there's no mention of decapitation,
and according to the report, the incident in which crabb died
did not take place where his body was found.
It happened over 10 miles away, near portsmouth harbour.
And this is where the plot thickens.
At the time of crabb's disappearance,
portsmouth was playing host to a very special visitor...
An advanced battle cruiser belonging to the soviet navy.
I think the big question is, is was he in fact actually working
as an operative at the time of his death?
Was crabb spying on the soviets?
And if so, did they catch him in the act?
A mutilated corpse is discovered
off the south coast of 1950s England.
What the dead diver was doing there is shrouded in mystery,
but the answer could shed new light
on a closely guarded state secret.
The cold war between the eastern block and the western allies
is at its height.
In 1956, there's a summit,
and khrushchev is coming to England.
The soviet leader, nikita khrushchev,
has been invited for diplomatic talks, and arrives by sea.
The ship was really a state-of-the-art
military battleship.
It's the battle cruiser the ordzhonikidze.
Incredibly attractive for british intelligence
to have an opportunity to maybe do a little bit of spying on it.
British prime minister anthony eden
is said to have ordered no surveillance operations
as a sign of good faith,
but the temptation perhaps proves too great
for some inside the intelligence community.
Unfortunately, what happens here is, mi6 goes a little rogue.
Mi6 operatives, possibly acting on their own initiative,
decide to recruit a diver
to undertake a dangerous operation...
An underwater spying mission beneath the ordzhonikidze.
And one man fits the bill...
Retired navy diver lionel buster crabb.
One of the theories is that they chose him
because he was already out of the military,
and perhaps, if you were caught,
there'd be some room there for plausible deniability.
But 47-year-old crabb, a lifelong smoker,
is not in peak condition.
A diver like that, especially in those days,
they were pretty hard-living guys,
and they drank a lot.
What crabb is tasked with finding out
under the soviet ship is unclear.
One possibility is that he was trying to study the propeller.
He was trying to get either photographs,
or even just to see it.
On April 19th, 1956, crabb is believed to have headed
out into the waters of portsmouth harbour
with his mi6 controller in a small boat.
After testing his equipment, he disappears into the depths.
Buster crabb is never seen alive again.
What happened to crabb?
Theories abound.
Was he cut by the propeller?
Was he captured by the russians, and decapitated?
Nobody really knows.
It's my speculation that he may have been killed
by the russians, but it's anybody's guess.
There are other, less sinister, theories.
Back in those days, diving was a risky business in itself.
Using rudimentary underwater breathing technology,
you know, the possibility for something to go wrong
is bound to happen at some point.
If you do twibble a knob a little bit too much,
you can soon find yourselves in a lot of difficulty.
To avoid detection, crabb was using a rebreather.
This diving equipment doesn't produce telltale bubbles,
but it does require constant attention
and clear thinking on the part of the diver.
The night before the mission,
apparently, buster is in a pub getting drunk,
bragging, and telling everybody about how he's a spy.
Diving and drinking do not mix.
Oxygen poisoning is a significant risk
when you're breathing from a rebreather.
Adding alcohol into the mix...
But could a highly decorated diver of crabb's experience
really have made such an obvious error of judgement?
Lionel crabb was a war hero.
And for many people,
the idea that a war hero of his magnitude
make mistakes seems impossible to believe.
If crabb's death was not an error or an accident,
it opens up the possibility that he was deliberately killed,
either under the soviet ship or elsewhere.
Evidence for this is limited, but some have questioned
whether the corpse that was finally found
could possibly have spent over a year in the water.
It's really unusual that you would find a headless,
handless, and at all identifiable
as a corpse 14 months later.
Experts also question how a corpse could possibly
have made the 10-mile journey
from portsmouth to chichester harbour.
So, it is unlikely that it would've been carried
that far away.
If you look at the currents and the tides,
it doesn't quite match.
According to the regular trends,
that would not be the right place for it to show up.
So, if crabb's body could not have floated on the tides
to chichester, how did it get there?
Was the body dumped? And if so, by whom?
Something happened between the time it was found
and the time he went missing.
Did the soviets throw the body overboard as they sailed east,
or was it planted by an embarrassed
british intelligence service
trying to cover up a failed operation?
An answer to this mystery may exist,
but right now, there's no way of knowing for sure.
In an unusual move by the british government,
files relating to the disappearance of lionel crabb
have been classified for 100 years.
These documents can't be opened until 2057.
By actually making it so secret, and by putting in this thing,
you've actually added to the mystery.
Whether it was an accident, murder, or misadventure,
the solution to the mystery
of what may have happened to lionel crabb
lies locked in the depths of a secret vault,
as unreachable as it would be at the bottom of the ocean.
But like a sunken body, it may well resurface one day.
Subtitles Diego Moraes(oakislandtk) www.opensubtitles.org