Flipper to the rescue for US Navy
Published: February 22, 2007
Dozens of dolphins and sea lions trained to detect and apprehend waterborne attackers could be sent on a mission to patrol a military base in Washington state, the US Navy said this week.
In a notice published in the Federal Register, the navy said it needed to bolster security at naval base Kitsap-Bangor, located on the Puget Sound close to Seattle.
The base was home to submarines, ships and laboratories and potentially vulnerable to attack by terrorist swimmers and scuba divers, the notice said.
Several options are under consideration, but the preferred plan is to send as many as 30 California sea lions and Atlantic Bottlenose dolphins from the navy’s Marine Mammal Program, based in San Diego.
A spokesman for the Marine Mammal Program, Tom Lapuzza, said, “These animals have the capabilities for what needs to be done for this particular mission.”
The navy is seeking public comment for an environmental impact statement it is preparing on the proposal.
Mr Lapuzza said because of their astonishing sonar abilities, dolphins are excellent at patrolling for swimmers and divers.
When it detects a person in the water, a navy dolphin drops a beacon. This tells a human interception team where to find the suspicious swimmer.
Dolphins also are trained to detect underwater mines; they were sent to do this in the Iraqi harbour of Umm Qasr in 2003.
The last time the animals were used operationally in San Diego was in 1996 when they patrolled the bay during a Republican convention.
Sea lions can carry in their mouths special cuffs attached to long ropes. If the animal finds a rogue swimmer, it can clamp the cuff around the person’s leg. The individual can then be reeled in for questioning.
The navy wanted to deploy marine animals to the north-west in 1989, Mr Lapuzza said, but a federal judge sided with animal-rights activists concerned about the effects of cooler water, as well as how the creatures would affect the environment.
Since then, the navy has taken the dolphins and sea lions to cold-water places like Alaska and Scandinavia to see how they coped.
“They did very well,” Mr Lapuzza said. If the animals are sent to Washington, the dolphins would be housed in heated enclosures and would only patrol the bay for periods of about two hours.
A marine biologist and spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Stephanie Boyles, said sea mammals did not provide a reliable defence system, and they should not be kept in small enclosures.
“We believe the United States’ citizens deserve the very best defence possible and this just isn’t it,” Ms Boyles said, adding that dolphins were easily distracted once in open water.
“They don’t understand the consequences of what will happen if they don’t carry out the mission.”
Among the other options the navy is considering for the Kitsap-Bangor base are the use of human interception teams and remote-controlled machines.
The navy has been training marine mammals since the 1960s, and currently keeps about 100 dolphins and sea lions. Most of these are in San Diego, but about 20 are deployed at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Georgia.
Dolphins live for up to 30 years. Mr Lapuzza said the navy occasionally gives its retired animals to marine parks but generally kept them until they died of old age.
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