Blue (DVD / Download),
directed by Karina Holden
THIS IS A BLUE MOVIE INDEED,
filled with existential despair. I have
watched many documentaries
bemoaning the state of the marine
environment over the years, and have
come to expect them at least to end
on an uplifting note – you know, how
it might be one minute to midnight,
but all is not lost if we change our
ways now and pull together.
Bluecan’t offer us too much hope
beyond the fact that there are still
people around, like all those featured
in the film, who care enough about
the planet and its inhabitants, and
who we might adopt as role models.
As you watch Blueyou get the
sense of people trapped in the
seventh circle of hell. We start with
Shark Girl Madison Stewart, who we
last saw reduced to tears by the plight
of her favourite marine animals in
Sharkwater Extinction, now wandering
sadly through Asian fish-markets as
sharks are hacked up around her.
And the film closes with her joining
Australian shark-diving legend Valerie
Taylor on what is really an elegy for
the world as it used to be.
Unfortunately, some of the old
footage of Taylor innocently touching
coral and riding whale sharks and
turtles all those years ago reminded
me that even divers have to some
extent been complicit in the demise of
the ocean environment.
The most telling segments feature
a wonderful Canadian scientist called
Jennifer Lavers. We meet her pumping
out the stomachs of seabird chicks;
later performing autopsies on them.
The number and variety of plastic
objects flushed out each time shocked
me. These weren’t microplastics but
large objects like pen-tops and caps,
fed to them by parents unwittingly
killing them with kindness. One of
these birds had swallowed and
retained 275 pieces of plastic crap.So we range from the fish-markets
of Lombok – Indonesia is world-leader
in sharkfin exports but Indonesians
don’t like the taste of shark and feed it
to their pigs – to the shores of
northern Australia, where turtles and
seals hang lifeless in ghost-nets.
We pass through heavily plastic-
bagged seas on the way to witnessing
various species of tuna entering their
twilight years.
The featured ocean ambassadors –
scuba-divers, freedivers, surfers,
rangers, marine biologists – are the
stars, but the scale of the problems
they face, as presented by Karina
Holden, seems overwhelming.
This film is beautifully shot and put
together, and as usual makes me want
to herd all the climate-change deniers
and fin-soup slurpers into a cinema for
a compulsory showing.
We divers might feel it’s our duty
to watch such depressing films, to
remind ourselves to stay on message,
but in a world of escapism it’s hard to
imagine enough people choosing
Blueahead of Avengers: Endgameor
Aquaman. However, Sparky Pictures
has now released on DVD and digital
what is very much a companion-piece,
Rob Stewart’s Sharkwater Extinction.63TOP 10 BEST-SELLING DIVING BOOKS
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FILM / BOOK REVIEW
We reviewed the cinema release in
our February edition but the DVD also
contains an interview with the late
director shot in Guadalupe in 2016,
and various out-takes and extras.
Sparky Pictures. Blue: DVD, 77min,
released 1 July. Sharkwater
Extinction: DVD, 75 min. Both cost
£15.99. Both can also be streamed
on video on-demand channels.AS INTRIGUING
AS EVER
Crabbgate, by John BevanI MUST ADMIT THAT my heart sank
a little at the prospect of reading yet
another book about Lt-Cdr Lionel
Crabb, the fallen angel who has
inspired a shelf-full of tomes since the
1950s. But the diver-spy just won’t go
away, and if I would trust anyone to
write his story without half an eye on
Hollywood contracts, it’s
John Bevan.
Then I twigged that I
had already read Bevan’s
Commander Crabb: What
Really Happened?, and that
this new book was a
much-extended version.
The pagination has
almost doubled since that book came
out four years ago, as new evidence
has emerged.
To recap, Crabb was a wartime
Royal Navy hero, a mine-clearance
frogman, but by 1956 had become a
depressive, unfit, debt-ridden drunk
with odd sexual predilections
(allegedly). So why did MI6 pick him to
undertake a covert diving inspection
of a visiting Soviet cruiser in
Portsmouth Harbour?
He failed to return from the not-
so-secret dive, but a headless body
recovered some way up the coast
months later was identified as his.
It was a huge story at the time, but
an embargo on the release of officialfiles before the year 2057 made it clear
that the authorities had information
they were very anxious to hide.
The idea of a spectacularly botched
cover-up was a call to arms for
conspiracy theorists, who for years
have insisted that Crabb was killed by
the Russians, the SBS, Mossad or his
own breathing apparatus – or else
didn’t die at all but went over to the
Soviets, voluntarily or otherwise.
Wild speculation has been
embellished with lurid details of
Crabb’s private life and his friends in
high places. Was the 100-year
embargo the result of a royal
connection, bound up in homosexual
blackmail and spy-rings?
If John Bevan half-hoped that his
earlier book might end the years of
speculation, now with Crabbgatehe
sticks a confident pin into the balloon
of far-fetched theories.
The book includes further
impressive research on his part, as
well as material released under the
Freedom of Information Act in 2015.
Bevan nails his colours to the mast
from the start – he considers Crabb to
have been a gallant if down-at-heel
hero whose reputation was dragged
through the mud to protect others.
If my heart initially sank, I was
surprised how rapidly I found myself
re-immersed in this classic mystery.
That’s because the author has
excelled second-time round – what
was originally a book that felt a bit
rushed has been hugely enhanced by
the additional material, and Bevan’s
hands-on research in areas such as the
graveyard where that
body was buried has been
painstaking, and has
yielded interesting results.
Most importantly,
Crabbgateis far better
constructed than the
previous book. The
conclusions remain
broadly in line but seemed to me to be
drawn with greater assurance.
I won’t spoil it for anyone unfamiliar
with the story or previously dissatisfied
by the lack of a satisfactory ending.
John Bevan has provided a convincing
one as far as Crabb’s famous dive
and its aftermath are concerned.
But the exact reasons for that
ludicrously extended cover-up will be
known only when the official lid is
finally lifted. I’ll be a centenarian and
probably past caring by then.
Submex
ISBN: 9780950824284
Softback, 200pp, 18x24cm, £12.99
Reviews by Steve WeinmanBLEAK EXPECTATIONS
divErNEt.com