GRIFFITHS: On the rocky coastline of Ukraine’s Black Sea, holidaymakers come to soak up the last of the summer sun. They come for another experience too, to play with man’s best friend at sea. Dolphins are loved around the world for their good nature and intelligence. Here those characteristics are being put to work with children.

LARISSA BUTHART (MOTHER HOLDING CHILD): She is visibly more relaxed - she sits quietly, watching everything around her. There is good eye contact after the session.

GRIFFITHS: This is dolphin therapy. Believers claim it can treat ailments from bedwetting to cerebral palsy. Dolphin therapy is controversial enough, even the doctors here admit that it’s unproven and untested but this clinic and some of its dolphins share a dark past, far removed from their role these days of new age healers. Once these dolphins were warriors, elite naval recruits trained by the Soviet Union.

Were these dolphins trained to attack?

VICTOR BARANETS: No doubt about that.

GRIFFITHS: For centuries the Crimean Peninsula has been a place of war. It was home to the Soviet Union’s once mighty Black Sea fleet. Now it’s still a naval base, but poor and decrepit. Most of the ships are rusting away.

When the Cold War was at its most chilly, this area witnessed a bizarre turn in the arms race. The United States and the USSR began developing a new weapon, both smart and swift – dolphins.

VICTOR BARANETS: There’s no doubt it was a dolphin’s arms race.

GRIFFITHS: Retired Colonel Victor Baranets worked with the animal warriors many years ago. He knows their secrets. The dolphins were taught to identify mines and distinguish between friendly and enemy ships and divers.

VICTOR BARANETS: You know how dolphins jump out of the water? They have an amazing capability of “instant picture taking” of an objects contours. Suppose if it is an enemy ship, a cruiser – the dolphin fixes everything in his memory during those seconds of jumping in the air.

GRIFFITHS: With the demise of the USSR, money and support for the dolphins disappeared too. Scientist Ludmilla Bogdanova has worked with the dolphin squadron since its inception nearly forty years ago. She remembers the end of the Soviet Union as a tough time.

LUDMILLA BOGDANOVA: There was a period when it was very difficult to keep the dolphins. But nevertheless, we’ve got people working here who enjoy the work they do with the dolphins. At the beginning we were involved in work that had nothing to do with dolphins – in order to earn money to feed them. And there were times when the employees did not receive their salaries. But they kept going.

GRIFFITHS: The navy’s researchers pushed on and found a new, lucrative job for their marine recruits. Now, though still in the navy, the dolphins have become therapists, dolling out their own special brand of medicine to sick children. For this, the money savvy navy charges each patient about eight hundred dollars.

LUDMILLA BOGDANOVA: They have a unique biological aura and can help improve the nervous system in children with irretention of urine, stammering problems, autism, cerebral palsy and neuroses.

GRIFFITHS: Dolphin Diana is a veteran of the Soviet navy. In her new deployment, she works with children every day. This morning it’s Dasha Muravey’s turn. She’s eight years old and has autism. Her mother says the dolphin has worked a miracle.

TATIANA MURAVEY: Dolphin therapy has made my child, let’s say, more close to normal children. Before she would refuse to communicate to all of us – she’d leave us, cover her ears with her hands, and would not react, even when she was called. Now this is practically a normal child. Her speech is slightly behind, but her vocabulary is quite okay and it’s getting closer to normal speech every year.

GRIFFITHS: Dasha’s treatment is ten sessions of therapy and check ups with doctors. Every day she’ll swim with Diana in this small enclosure, touching, feeding and listening to the animal.

TATIANA MURAVEY: Does Diana talk to you?

DASHA: She does.

TATIANA MURAVEY: Maybe you can show that?

DASHA: I will.

GRIFFITHS: Tatiana Muravey hopes Diana will teach her daughter to feel and open up emotions blocked by her condition. The guru of this unconventional medicine is Doctor Ludmilla Lukina. She’s been researching the healing power of dolphins for nearly twenty years.

LUDMILLA LUKINA: When a person sees a dolphin, he enjoys that, he smiles – it is a pleasure for him to communicate with a dolphin. And this is the first stage.

GRIFFITHS: But Ludmilla Lukina claims the real cure lies in the high frequency sound waves emitted by the animals.

LUDMILLA LUKINA: We, for instance record the dolphin’s signals during dolphin therapy sessions. We try to identify the frequency characteristics of this signal, the power of its radiation, and try to understand what kind of disease requires the application of this or that signal. Our acoustics experts then analyse the spectrum of these signals and single out the most relevant for the human being. That is the most interesting aspect of our scientific activities.

GRIFFITHS: In the deep waters of the Black Sea, Alexei Birkun is searching for the bottlenose dolphin in its habitat. He is a medical doctor turned scientist and conservationist. After a long campaign catching dolphins from the wild is now banned. Doctor Birkun says the military oceanarium exploits both animals and people.

DR ALEXEI BIRKUN: They take advantage of people’s ignorance in the medical field – of mums and dads striving to save their children by any means. And they believe in it. They don’t care where they go to a dolphin or to a shaman. If a shaman was available, they’d go to a shaman.

GRIFFITHS: Alexei Birkun not only doubts the claims of dolphin therapists but worries that the patients may suffer more.

DR ALEXEI BIRKUN: These mammals produce about 8 kilograms of excrement per day in the same water area with the children – who are unable to protest. And that is quite perilous. Mucous membrane problems, conjunctivitis, tracheitus [SPELT LIKE THIS ON SCREEN BUT SPELLCHECK SAYS "TRACHEITIS”], colds and skin rash are frequent complications of the dolphin therapy.

GRIFFITHS: Dolphin therapist Ludmilla Lukina has dealt with the sceptics before. The success of the treatment she says is written on the faces of her young patients.

LUDMILLA LUKINA: Science is a branch of human activities that is backed up by mathematics. And mathematics has backed up our research, so it can never be pseudoscientific.

GRIFFITHS: This is another modern day deployment for the animal squadron. Dolphin Richard and his trainer Yuri Murin, put on shows for tourists. Dig deeper into the past of this military facility and Yuri Murin becomes as frosty as the Cold War. The navy wont reveal how many dolphins are here or whether they still moonlight for the military.

YURI MURIN: The answer to this question is very simple - a reply to this question might harm the national policy of our country.

GRIFFITHS: If retired Colonel Victor Baranets is to be believed, there are even more sinister secrets.

VICTOR BARANETS: The dolphin can take off the masks, cut off cables. Finally, if the assignment is not accomplished the dolphin might be armed with a mine that will explode, together with the diver.

GRIFFITHS: The lethal talents of these dolphins is laughed off by those who prefer to sell their healing abilities. To Ludmilla Lukina, dolphins simply don’t have the killer instinct.

LUDMILLA LUKINA: I think this is more of a legend. I don’t think it’s realistic. Somebody can hardly teach a dolphin to take off a mask.

GRIFFITHS: For her the former navy warriors of the Black Sea dolphin squadron have worked some magic.