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Has a creature surfacing in arctic waters been primed for a sinister purpose?

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You can train them, but you can't totally control them.

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Is there a legendary monster lurking off America's coastline, capable of taking down a ship?

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This must have been an incredibly strong creature.

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And how did a man survive for 438 days adrift on the Pacific Ocean?

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You are not only at the mercy of the sea, you are at the mercy of the gods.

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The underwater realm is another dimension.

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It's a physically hostile place where dreams of promise can sink into darkness.

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I'm Jeremy Wade.

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I'm searching the world to bring you the most iconic and baffling underwater mysteries known to science.

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Shipwrecks can't just disappear, or can they?

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It's a dangerous unexplored frontier that swallows evidence.

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We know more about the face of Mars than we do our deep estotians.

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Where unknown is normal and understanding is rare.

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I've spent decades tracking down underwater creatures all over the world,

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and as a general rule, they don't want to be found.

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Animals in the wild keep their distance.

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So when reports surface from the arctic waters of Norway of a large marine mammal

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mysteriously investigating boats, alarm bells start ringing.

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April 26, 2019. Hammerfest Norway.

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Researchers conducting a government fishing survey are surprised by the mysterious appearance

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of a large marine mammal near their boat.

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As the white animal approaches, they realise it's a beluga whale,

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something rarely seen in spring Norwegian waters.

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To make things even more unusual, this beluga whale seems to be friendly.

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Naturally free beluga or any cetacean don't come to humans.

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They're inquisitive, but they'll always keep distance.

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It'll never be right up to the side of the boat.

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Stranger still is the fact that this beluga has something attached to its body.

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And was this an unusual whale in that it was interested in them,

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but it also had a harness on.

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To add to the mystery of this beluga whale, where did it come from?

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Did it escape? Did it just say, you know, but I want to be free?

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Marine mammals have been known to escape from captivity,

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and this beluga's ease around the researchers could be a sign that it's been raised by people.

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It meets humans again, and it's something that's conditioned.

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That's where the food comes from. I'm safe with them.

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Animals go for the easiest source of food.

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Beluga whales are kept in captivity in aquaria and marine parks worldwide,

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but not in Norway or anywhere else in Scandinavia.

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I think the evidence is pretty clear that it's been raised by humans.

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So the question then is, which humans?

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The Norwegians decide to investigate further,

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and when they study the beluga's harness, they discover two camera mounts.

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Could these have been fitted by wildlife researchers?

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Keen to work out where the beluga has come from, local experts come up with an idea.

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The only way we're going to find out who is behind this is to track this whale.

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The beluga is fitted with a satellite tracker in the hope that it will head back home.

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But after several weeks of monitoring, the data shows no significant movement.

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The whale is staying put.

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The tracker does, however, reveal some new information.

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The tracking of the whale has shown two things.

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One, it doesn't seem to have the ability to hunt and feed on its own.

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And two, it doesn't communicate with other belugas,

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suggesting it doesn't have those social aspects that it would have learned

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if it had been raised in the wild.

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The animal's inability to feed itself and lack of social skills

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further points to a life spent in captivity.

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It could be it's the first time it's been allowed out.

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Researchers turn their attention back to the only piece of hard evidence they have, the harness.

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Examining the straps, they discover a decisive clue.

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The fact that the harness says St. Petersburg suggests that it is a beluga trained in Russia.

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Why would the Russians be putting a harness on a beluga?

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The Russian border is less than 200 miles away,

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and the Russians have a track record in training marine mammals.

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They have guard animals that guard an area in floating pens.

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They have search and recovery animals.

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Seals have been trained to locate mines and lost ordnance,

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and dolphins have been tasked with taking out enemy targets.

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Parachuting down, the harness as they hit the water, release,

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what would happen is that they would have a trigger on the beak

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and an explosive pack on the dorsal fin.

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So then they would swim up to the boat and five of these animals touching the boat.

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Up it goes in flames.

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Such methods were developed during the Cold War, and many thought ended with it.

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But recent US Navy spending suggests that they continue to this day.

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The military have always been interested in the potential for marine mammals

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to assist them in various ways, and in fact, the military still fund a huge amount of research on marine mammals to this day.

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If the Americans are doing it, then surely the Russians are going to still be doing it as well.

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So is the Beluga Whale found in Norway a specialist Russian underwater operative?

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You can train them, you can tame them, but you can't totally control them.

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200 miles east of where the Beluga was found is the Russian military base of Momsk.

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And recent satellite images reveal something shocking hidden among the Russian ships.

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Analysts believe that these large octagonal shapes are floating animal pens.

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Could the Beluga Whale have escaped from this top secret military facility?

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When a mystery Beluga Whale is found in Norwegian waters wearing a harness with camera mounts,

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there are suspicions that the animal could be a trained Russian underwater operative.

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But could this single animal be evidence of a larger military force?

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The Whale seems to have been on some kind of surveillance mission.

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Norway is basically on the forefront of NATO, front lines with Russia.

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The Arctic is opening up.

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As sea ice melts, the Arctic is becoming more accessible and its resources are becoming more and more sought after.

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Every year as the ice recedes, military forces are moving in and the Russians are at the forefront.

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Some fear that Belugas may be a new part of the Russian arsenal.

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There's nothing that a Beluga can do that a dolphin can't do, but a Beluga can live in Arctic waters.

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The Beluga's echolocation can actually penetrate up to a meter through sand and mud.

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They can go places and not be noticed unlike ROVs or AOVs.

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They can travel long distances without having to take breaks or to be recharged.

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Could that Beluga Whale be agent double-o blubber?

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One critical factor suggests not.

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Training secret agents, human or animal, requires a major investment of time and money.

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If it was military, the Russians would have been there and they would have taken it back.

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So the Whale's origin and purpose remain a mystery.

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But one thing's for sure, this suspected spy has been brought in from the cold.

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It's been adopted by locals who have named the Beluga Valdimir, a pun on the Norwegian for Whale,

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and the name of Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, himself once an undercover Soviet agent.

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Most searches for lost mariners continue for a matter of days or weeks.

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After that, the missing are presumed dead.

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But how long can you survive alone at sea?

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The seemingly miraculous 14-month survival of a Central American fisherman

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calls into question everything we thought we knew.

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January 30th, 2014.

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Reports emerge from a tiny stretch of islands in the Central Pacific

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of a mysterious foreigner coming ashore with a small boat.

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The Marshall Islands are a remote cluster of islands in the Pacific.

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The fact that there would be an individual on the beach in a really bad way is really remarkable.

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The man's name is Jose Alvorenga, and the story he tells his rescuers is relayed around the world.

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He came off the coast of Mexico in a very small 24-foot fiberglass vessel,

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and that was almost a year and a half ago.

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A fishing trip that was meant to last just a few days ended up lasting 438.

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How is it that he survived that long?

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Surviving the Pacific adrift in a small boat for this length of time would be a first.

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It's inconceivable that a human being would be able to do that.

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Alvorenga describes an incredible journey from Mexico to the Marshall Islands

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across half the width of the Pacific.

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But could a man survive for 14 months alone in the largest ocean on the planet?

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It's crazy to survive that long at sea because you have to imagine that the open ocean is a type of desert.

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The Pacific Ocean is massive. It's an unbelievably big space.

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According to Alvorenga, when he sets out on his fishing trip, he has supplies for just a few days.

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It was supposed to be an overnight trip in a small open boat, and it'd be encountered bad weather and a bad storm.

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The fisherman's boat is pulled out to sea, and most of his supplies are swept overboard.

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Before Alvorenga gets out of range, he's able to radio his boss to warn him of his predicament.

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He's out there with no engine, with no oars, no means of propulsion, and he's basically left to float.

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Being lost at sea is probably one of the most lonely things in the universe.

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You are not only at the mercy of the sea, you are at the mercy of the gods.

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His story is certainly mysterious, and many people don't believe it, because it's almost unthinkable what he's telling them.

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And when Alvorenga's account is put under scrutiny, shocking details start to emerge.

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He's out there on a boat with nothing. How do you survive that? It's literally phenomenal.

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In 2012, fisherman Jose Alvorenga sets out in a small boat from the coast of southern Mexico.

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14 months later, he turns up in the Marshall Islands, 6,000 miles to the west.

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Can he really have survived the open ocean for so long?

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It's certainly theoretically possible, according to scientific models and current understanding, that he could have reached the marshals.

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In the Pacific Ocean, there is the North Pacific Jire.

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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 a boom.

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But many people following the story question the truth of Alvorenga's account.

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After such an ordeal, how could the fisherman look so healthy?

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He looks a little, you know, plump around the face.

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But as some experts are keen to point out, sometimes looks can be deceiving.

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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.

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He's bloated because of his malnutrition.

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Actually, for many months, he would have probably looked emaciated and even possibly skeletal.

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Doubts remain, however, about how Alvorenga could have found enough food and water to survive.

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In most cases, people adrift in the Pacific last only a matter of days.

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Filming off the northern coast of Australia in 2015, I encountered a fisherman who'd become stranded on a barren tropical island.

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This is an uninhabited island, and we first of all saw a cooler on the rocks, and then one of us spotted, said, there's somebody there, there's somebody there.

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It was sheer luck that we came across him in time.

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The castaway had run out of water, and after two days marooned under the fierce sun, he was facing death from dehydration.

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So how did Alvorenga find enough water to survive for 438 days?

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The general rule of thumb is that it's the three-day rule. You know, without water after three days, you'll die.

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So how did he manage?

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Drinking sea water can be deadly to humans because our kidneys can't process the amount of salt it contains.

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Alvorenga 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.

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But when his supplies ran out, he was forced to resort to desperate measures.

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As well as water, Alvorenga would have needed regular food.

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The boat would have become its own microcosm, that there would have been LJ and plankton and barnacles building up on the bottom, and that in itself would have attracted his food.

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If he's living 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.

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But one detail of his epic ordeal is perhaps the toughest to swallow. When he started out on his two-day fishing trip, Jose Alvorenga was not alone.

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Castaway Jose Alvorenga 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.

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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 that basically stopped eating and therefore shut down and died.

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Alvorenga 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 Alvorenga of resorting to cannibalism. This would not be a first.

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There are stories of whalers who have been lost at sea in the Pacific and had to resort to cannibalism in the 19th century.

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It's impossible for anybody to speculate what they would do in that situation.

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He'd kill and cannibalize his partner. The only person that knows is the fisherman himself.

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A complete physical examination of Alvorenga reveals symptoms of anemia, possibly the result of vitamin deficiencies caused by prolonged starvation. For supporters, it's proof his ordeal really happened.

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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.

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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.

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The annals of seafaring are full of stories of mysterious creatures from the deep. Today such reports are much more rare.

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So when one does surface, evoking the legend of the greatest sea monster of them all, the mighty Kraken, it demands our attention.

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January 12, 2003. Veteran Jotsman Olivier de Cursosan is attempting to win the Jules Verne trophy for the fastest circumnavigation of the world by sail.

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There's a relatively unknown story of this sailboat, the Geronimo, that was in a race.

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The 110 foot Trimaran Geronimo, the largest racing yacht of its kind, is making good progress through the North Atlantic.

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But not far from the Portuguese island of Madeira, it suddenly loses speed.

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The boat dropped from 24 knots down to 11, it slowed right down.

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Unable to determine what's caused this deceleration, the crew inspect below the waterline.

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They think something must be wrong with the vessel. The first mate goes below and appears through a porthole. What he reports is something stuck to the rudder, bigger than his leg.

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He can't believe his eyes. Some kind of tentacled beast is wrapped around the vessel.

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This must have been an incredibly strong creature.

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Armed with only boat hooks and pocket knives, the crew try to force the animal to let go.

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But after an hour of struggle, the creature is still attached.

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The captain orders the sails to be lowered.

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And as the ship comes to a halt, the underwater attacker releases its grip and vanishes into the deep.

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The captain gets a good look at the creature and estimates it to be 10 meters long.

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An encounter with a 30-foot tentacled monster of this mass is extremely rare.

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He says he's never seen anything like it.

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The incident leaves the crew in a state of shock.

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What was the mysterious creature that attacked their boat?

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The encounter has echoes of ancient sea stories.

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Has a legend of the deep resurfaced.

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Throughout history, sailors have always encountered animals at sea that they didn't know what to make of and that they feared.

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We don't know what these animals really were or whether they even existed at all outside of the imagination of these sailors.

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There is one fabled beast whose name alone was enough to terrify hardy sailors for centuries.

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The Kraken, the breaker of ships, large creatures that would pull ships down to their deaths.

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The Kraken has always been assumed to be a myth.

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But could there be a real world creature behind the legend?

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There are tentacled titans out there.

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I've come face to face with the giant Pacific octopus, the largest of the octopus family.

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Its 20-foot armspan is impressive, but it's no ship breaker.

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I've also encountered another potential suspect.

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Squid.

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Vieracious, deep sea predators.

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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.

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Quite an impressive beast.

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Going back.

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The Humboldt squid has the aggression of the terrifying Kraken.

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But not the size.

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There are, however, much bigger squid out there.

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There's been evidence of giant squid without actual direct observations.

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And that evidence comes from their primary predator, the sperm well.

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On their deep dives, to over 4,000 feet, which can last for up to 45 minutes,

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sperm whales are known to prey on giant squid.

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Most of the early evidence actually came from just pieces of squid that were found in the stomachs of sperm whales,

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or from the scars on the whales themselves.

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These giant sucker marks from the battles between the squid and the whales.

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With only rare sightings and occasional physical evidence, it's hard to fathom the potential size of this beast.

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We know giant squid get big, we just don't know how big they get.

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If you're going to fight a sperm whale, you better be big.

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Just how big giant squid can grow is one of the great deep ocean mysteries.

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But a new science involving a remarkable natural phenomenon could provide the answer.

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Bioluminescence is biologically produced light, and in the deep pelagic zone,

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80% of all animals are bioluminescent.

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This strange light-producing property inspired a team of scientists led by Dr Edith Widder

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to attempt something unique, attracting the elusive giant squid using a lure made of LED lights.

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Her theory was that if we can recreate the light sequence that these squid prey make,

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you could potentially use that to attract giant squid.

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This is a very interesting theory, and it's very interesting to see.

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This extraordinary footage captured by Dr Widder's team,

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2,300 feet down off the coast of Japan, astounded biologists.

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This clip is incredible because we're seeing this squid in its natural habitat in the deep sea.

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It's never been done before.

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The footage is a first, but the estimated size of the squid is just 14 feet long,

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half the size of the beast that attacked the racing yacht Geronimo.

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But Dr Widder is not deterred.

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In 2019, she relocates her search to the Gulf of Mexico,

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100 miles off the coast of Louisiana.

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Her team has developed the electronic lure to mimic the light patterns of the atola deep-sea jellyfish,

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which attracts giant squid.

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And what rises from the abyss single-handedly resurrects the myth of the Kraken.

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The Kraken

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When a huge tentacled creature envelops a racing yacht in the Atlantic,

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it revives stories of the Kraken.

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Could the giant squid be the real animal behind this recent story?

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And the ancient legend?

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Off the southern coast of the United States,

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a revolutionary lure that mimics bioluminescent creatures is being used as bait

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to catch on camera the stuff of legends.

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We're visual animals, and so when humans have gone down to explore the deep sea,

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traditionally we go down and shine these great lights so that we can see everything.

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But in reality, it probably scares a lot of things away.

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To avoid this, Dr. Widder's team use infrared cameras to penetrate the darkness,

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allowing them to see but not disturb the creatures that come to investigate the electronic bait.

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Hours and hours of darkness with maybe the occasional flash of something going by.

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And then suddenly, out of nowhere, come these tentacles.

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The Kraken

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It's massive.

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This giant squid is taller than a two-story house,

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easily big enough to take on the racing trimaran, Geronimo.

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So could this be the legendary Kraken, breaker of ships?

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We just now know they're there.

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So it's answered one question, it's opened up about a bazillion more.

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Deep water diving can be deadly, and I've had glimpses of what can go wrong.

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Can you help me? Do you read me? Do you read me? Over.

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Also coming in my mask.

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When diving deaths happen, their causes are often lost beneath the waves.

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So when the decapitated corpse of a diver is discovered off the coast of England,

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at the height of the Cold War, there are many theories about what or who may have killed him.

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Can new analysis of the evidence solve the mystery of the headless frogman?

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June 9th, 1957, Chichester Harbour on the south coast of England.

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The crew of a commercial fishing boat make a gruesome discovery,

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a swollen mass in the water.

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It can only be one thing.

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A body in a wetsuit, missing its head and its hands.

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Preliminary analysis of the rubber-suited torso reveals it may have been submerged for many months.

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And diving fins attached to the rotting feet indicate the body is a frogman.

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But who is this mysterious dead diver?

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All we actually have is the body, so if we can understand the body,

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maybe we can say something about the mystery.

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The autopsy report raises many questions.

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Why are the diver's head and hands missing?

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Have they been eaten by fish, cut off by an unfortunate boating accident,

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or has there been foul play?

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Typically, when you find only a torso missing the head and the hands,

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this is an effort to try to hide the identity of the victim.

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Investigators are baffled.

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They are unable to match dental records or fingerprints,

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or even determine how long the body has been in the water.

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How can you actually recognize a corpse if it doesn't have a head and hands?

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When authorities comb local files going back over a year, they discover a possible victim.

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And a small scar above the corpse's left knee leads investigators to conclude

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that the body is that of retired military diver Lionel Buster Crab.

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Buster Crab was a frogman.

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We're talking about soldiers that are crem-de-la-crem of the underwater commandos.

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Crab, it turns out, was a scuba diving pioneer who served with distinction during World War II.

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As a demolition frogman, he was involved in numerous dangerous underwater missions.

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The Navy frogmen during World War II were the elite of the elites.

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Combining the kind of rudimentary diving technology with what was essentially underwater bomb disposal.

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Crab officially retired from the Navy after the war to become a commercial diver.

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He was a treasure hunter. He was doing a whole lot of other things,

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but he wasn't supposed to be doing anything related to the military anymore.

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But when investigators study the equipment recovered with the corpse,

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they notice that the dive fins are military issue.

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So on the day that he died, was Crab back working for the armed forces.

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A Royal Navy report released weeks later suggests that this is the case.

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The Navy puts out an official notice that he's missing, presumed dead,

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that there was an apparent accident related to testing out new dive equipment.

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The idea that war hero Crab was testing new equipment for the Navy seems plausible.

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But there's no mention of decapitation, and according to the report,

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the incident in which Crab died did not take place where his body was found.

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It happened over 10 miles away near Portsmouth Harbour,

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and this is where the plot thickens.

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At the time of Crab's disappearance, Portsmouth was playing host to a very special visitor,

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an advanced battle cruiser belonging to the Soviet Navy.

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I think the big question is, is was he in fact actually working as an operative at the time of his death?

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Was Crab spying on the Soviets?

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And if so, did they catch him in the act?

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A mutilated corpse is discovered off the south coast of 1950s England.

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What the dead diver was doing there is shrouded in mystery.

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But the answer could shed new light on a closely guarded state secret.

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The Cold War between the Eastern Bloc and the Western Allies is at its height.

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In 1956, there's a summit, and Khrushchev is coming to England.

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The Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev has been invited for diplomatic talks and arrives by sea.

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The ship was really a state-of-the-art military battleship.

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It's the battle cruiser, the Ozhoni Kidza.

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Incredibly attractive for British intelligence to have an opportunity to maybe do a little bit of spying on it.

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British Prime Minister Anthony Eden is said to have ordered no surveillance operations as a sign of good faith,

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but the temptation perhaps proves too great for some inside the intelligence community.

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Unfortunately, what happens here is MI6 goes to the rogue.

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MI6 operatives, possibly acting on their own initiative, decide to recruit a diver to undertake a dangerous operation,

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an underwater spying mission beneath the Ozhoni Kidza.

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And one man fits the bill, retired Navy diver Lionel Buster Crabb.

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One of the theories is that they chose him because he was already out of the military,

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and perhaps if he were caught, there'd be some room there for plausible deniability.

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But 47-year-old Crabb, a lifelong smoker, is not in peak condition.

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A diver like that, especially in those days, they were pretty hard-living guys, and they drank a lot.

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What Crabb is tasked with finding out under the Soviet ship is unclear.

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The one possibility is that he was trying to study the propeller.

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He was trying to get either photographs or even just to see it.

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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.

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After testing his equipment, he disappears into the depths.

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Buster Crabb is never seen alive again.

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What happened to Crabb? Theories abound.

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Was he cut by the propeller? Was he captured by the Russians and decapitated? Nobody really knows.

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It's my speculation that he may have been killed by the Russians, but it's a human scarce.

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There are other, less sinister theories.

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Back in those days, diving was a risky business in itself, using rudimentary underwater breathing technology.

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The possibility for something to go wrong is bound to happen at some point.

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If you do twiddle a knob a little bit too much, you can soon find yourselves in a lot of difficulty.

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To avoid detection, Crabb was using a rebreather.

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This diving equipment doesn't produce telltale bubbles, but it does require constant attention and clear thinking on the part of the diver.

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The night before the mission, apparently Buster is in a pub getting drunk, bragging and telling everybody about how he's a spy.

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Diving and drinking do not mix. Oxygen poisoning is a significant risk when you're breathing from a rebreather.

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Adding alcohol into the mix.

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But could a highly decorated diver of Crabb's experience really have made such an obvious error of judgement?

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Lionel Crabb was a war hero, and for many people the idea that a war hero of his magnitude makes mistakes seems impossible to believe.

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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.

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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.

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It's really unusual that you would find it headless, handless and at all identifiable as a corpse 14 months later.

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Experts also question how a corpse could possibly have made the 10 mile journey from Portsmouth to Chichester Harbour.

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So it is unlikely that it would have been carried that far away.

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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.

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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?

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Something happened between the time it was found and the time he went missing.

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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?

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An answer to this mystery may exist, but right now there's no way of knowing for sure.

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In an unusual move by the British government, files relating to the disappearance of Lionel Crabb have been classified for 100 years.

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These documents can't be opened until 2057.

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By actually making it so secret and by putting in this thing, you've actually added to the mystery.

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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.

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As unreachable as it would be at the bottom of the ocean. But like a sunken body, it may well resurface one day.