CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Secrets Of The Spy Whale on BBC2

Secrets Of The Spy Whale (BBC2)

Rating:

What do you call an escaped Russian spy whale? The best I could come up with was Agent Blubber-0 Seven or, as this one might be on a mission to destroy Western civilisation, Ernst Stavro Blowhole.

Delighted Scandinavian townsfolk who discovered the overgrown dolphin in their harbour nearly dubbed it James Beluga, but settled on Hvaldimir, a play on Vladimir, because ‘hval’ is Norwegian for whale.

Readers can surely do better. Puns on a postcard, please. 

Secrets Of The Spy Whale opened with some astonishing amateur phone footage of the white beluga’s first appearance off the Arctic coast of Norway, around the island of Ingoya — home to just 20 hardy folk.

On a spring day in 2019, Joar Hesten and his father were fishing for cod when the whale approached their boat. At first it seemed to want to play, bobbing its head out of the water, but the men soon realised it was in pain.

Canvas webbing, like a dog harness, was buckled around its body and was cutting into its flesh. Joar phoned for help, but when wildlife experts arrived a few hours later, they recommended euthanising the animal with a rifle.

By then, Joar had built up a rapport with the beluga. It allowed him to stroke its nose, and took fish from his hand. Rather than see it killed, he bravely donned a survival suit and plunged into the freezing water to unclasp the harness.

‘People put him in this situation in the first place,’ he reasoned. Saving Hvaldimir was, ‘one of the best moments of my life’.

It was one of the best moments for Norway’s tourist industry, too. Visitors flocked to see the whale, which had an impressive repertoire of tricks — twirling on its tail, fetching objects from the water (including a phone dropped by one visitor) and posing for selfies with a broad grin.

After half an hour, the documentary took a deep dive (dreadful expression, but it’s another whale pun) into the history of marine mammals in the military.

In California, a former dolphin trainer with the CIA and the U.S. Navy reminisced about teaching the animals to attach tracking devices to enemy ships. To anyone who remembers 1973’s The Day Of The Dolphin, starring George C. Scott, this was old news.

An ex-Soviet submarine commander talked about how the USSR used all sorts of animals in Arctic waters, including orcas, walruses and seals.

What a shame Barry ‘the Walrus of Love’ White isn’t still around — he could have sung the theme for a soulful spy movie called The Walrus Who Loved Me.

This documentary took more than an hour to get to the point, but gradually it emerged that Russia still uses belugas to guard its nuclear submarine port near Murmansk. The whales are trained to spot enemy divers. Incredibly, a satellite photo on Google Maps showed the facility, complete with a top secret sub and belugas.

Hvaldimir, it turned out, was one of them until he defected . . . the whale who came in from the cold.