Spy Whale does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a documentary about a whale that was, in all probability – if not in all cetacean consciousness – a spy. For the Russians. In 2019, a beluga whale who would eventually be named Hvaldimir (a portmanteau of the Norwegian word for “whale” and Putin’s first name) approached a fishing boat off Ingøya Island, virtually the northernmost point of Scandinavia. It was wearing a harness that was cutting into its flesh and appeared to be seeking help, as intelligent marine mammals are known to do.
The boat’s captain, Joar Hesten, radioed for help from Jørgen Ree Wiig – whose job at the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries it is to free whales who get caught up in fishing equipment – and kept Hvaldimir with the boat by feeding him fish until Wiig could travel the five hours to meet them. Together they eventually got the harness off. There is footage of their achievement, which involved Hesten risking his life by joining the distressed whale in the freezing water. “People had put him in this situation in the first place,” he says. “We had to make it right.” Hesten is the calmest man you will ever meet. If you were a panicking beluga whale stuck in a harness, he is the man you would want at your side. When the last buckle finally opens, “it is one of the best moments of my life,” he says. “I just wished him luck on his journey.”
But Hvaldimir didn’t go far. Apparently used to people and unused to finding his own food, he stayed with Hesten’s and other boats before taking himself off to Hammerfest harbour, where he did “tricks” and became a tourist attraction. Meanwhile, the media followed up on the harness, which had attachments that seemed once to have held cameras and buckles inscribed with “Equipment of St Petersburg”.
If you think you can guess where this is going – you are quite right. Those two rather large clues, plus the fact that a drone was seen following Hvaldimir for 30 miles, makes it quite likely that the whale was part of a Russian surveillance operation. Northern Norway is near Murmansk, home of a Russian naval base where Putin is thought to have resurrected a cold war training programme for whales (and dolphins originally, but they all died because nobody – and really I do feel the Soviets should have been better at this – realised the waters would be too cold for them) that ended when the USSR collapsed.
The bulk of the documentary is taken up with a long, yet not overly detailed or fascinating description of the US cetacean training programmes in the 1950s and 60s (they used seals too, but these don’t get a look-in here. If there is a pinniped union, they should write a stiff letter at least). They were taught to swim to objects too far down for men to reach, sending camera footage back to base; trace enemy swimmers by the noise they made, and push paddles when they heard them; and to place magnetic listening devices on submarines and – theoretically at least – mines too. And they could be taken from place to place, slung under a helicopter, and set to work wherever their bosses felt they were most needed.
There is less detail about the equivalent Russian programme, but it was largely assumed then and now to be running along the same lines. And then up pops Hvaldimir to suggest that it still is.
All this is interspersed with footage of Hvaldimir entertaining the growing crowds at Hammerfest, and interviews with those charged with ensuring his welfare and deciding whether he should be taken to an aquarium or left to return to the wild (he learned to feed himself so it was the latter in the end). There is also additional beluga whale footage, which is nice to look at but does push the film to a very stretched-feeling 90 minutes. It was undoubtedly done to give us time to appreciate the majesty of the beast and to ponder, as Hesten gestures to at the start, man’s warlike tendencies and our willingness to interfere with animals for our own ends. But it ends up feeling thin and unsatisfactory, especially when there is no new evidence about Hvaldimir or the Russian training programme. What answers there are (the buckles marked “St Petersburg” are indeed Russian-made, the harness means the whale probably diverted from a surveillance mission rather than escaped from a pen) have an inescapable “Uh-’kay” feel about them. Sometimes less – say 30 minutes less – is more.
• Secrets of the Spy Whale aired on BBC Two and is now on iPlayer.
