The U.S. Navy’s Exceptional Marine Mammal Program

On March 21, 2003, in one of many first fight operations of the U.S.-led invasion or Iraq, a mixed drive of American, British, and Polish troops attacked and captured the Persian Gulf port of Umm Qasr. All through the invasion and the next occupation, Umm Qasr would function an important transport terminal for humanitarian assist. However earlier than any provides could possibly be landed, the port needed to be cleared of mines and different explosives left behind by Iraqi forces. This proved a frightening job, with the thick mud on the harbour backside lowering Explosive Ordnance Disposal or EOD groups to grope about in near-zero visibility. In response, the U.S. Navy dispatched its most elite diving group to Iraq. Skilled for years by the Navy’s foremost consultants, these divers may plunge greater than 300 metres beneath the waves, maintain their breath for as much as quarter-hour, and accomplish that all day lengthy with out affected by the bends. Utilizing their extremely attuned senses, they may simply find overseas objects in even the murkiest of waters, permitting them to clear over 100 mines and booby traps from Umm Qasr inside weeks. And what’s extra, they carried out this heroic obligation for no larger reward than a snack of fish. As you might need guessed, these superhuman sailors – named Makai and Tacoma – weren’t, in reality, human, however bottlenose dolphins. For over 60 years, the U.S. Navy has used educated dolphins and sea lions to hold out quite a lot of specialised missions, from espionage and mine clearance to defending naval bases from enemy divers, utilizing their superior endurance and senses to carry out duties human divers can not. However whereas this system has been extremely profitable, with the animals proving superior to even essentially the most refined drone expertise, it has additionally attracted appreciable controversy, with animal welfare activists accusing the Navy of abuse and questioning the ethics of utilizing animals in warfare within the first place. That is fascinating story of the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program.

The exceptional intelligence of marine mammals has lengthy been identified, with nautical lore abounding with tales of shipwrecked sailors being rescued by dolphins, porpoises, and different creatures. Nonetheless, it might not be till the mid-Twentieth century that anybody tried to use these skills to be used in warfare. Among the many first was Swedish behavioural scientist Valdemar Fellenius, who in 1941 established a facility at Gålö close to Stockholm to coach a gaggle of harbour seals to find and mark mines, submarines, torpedoes, and different naval ordnance. Whereas Fellenius’s efforts had been profitable, the Swedish Navy was lower than impressed, and in 1943 the mission was shut down with out the seals ever having been used within the subject.

In 1959, the U.S. Navy launched its personal dolphin analysis program in an try and develop new hydrodynamic shapes and coatings for torpedoes. In the middle of this analysis, Navy scientists famous the dolphins’ distinctive intelligence and trainability and puzzled if these could possibly be exploited to carry out specialised underwater missions. Thus, in 1962, a particular analysis program was established at Level Mugu close to Oxnard, California. Over the following decade, this system carried out experiments with varied small marine mammals together with bottlenose dolphins, beluga whales, porpoises, pilot whales, orcas, seals, and California sea lions – in addition to non-mammal species resembling sharks and rays – earlier than lastly selecting dolphins and sea lions as the best candidates. Not solely can dolphins dive all the way down to depths of 300 metres, however their distinctive pure sonar skills enable them to simply find objects buried within the seafloor even in pitch darkness. Sea lions can solely dive all the way down to 200 metres, however compensate for this with distinctive eyesight, pace, and agility.

The primary Navy-trained marine mammal to be deployed within the subject was a bottlenose dolphin named Tuffy, who in 1965 participated within the SEALAB II mission, an effort to find out whether or not people may stay and work underneath the ocean for prolonged durations. Over the course of the mission, Tuffy was educated to ferry messages and provides between the floor and the pressurized Sealab habitat, 62 metres under the Pacific Ocean off La Jolla, California. Tuffy was additionally educated to seek out and information misplaced or injured divers again to the habitat. That very same yr, the Navy deployed 5 dolphins to Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam to hold out underwater surveillance of North Vietnamese naval bases and defend U.S. vessels from assault by enemy divers. This unit would stay in Vietnam till the tip of the warfare in 1975.

Primarily based on these early successes, in 1967 the Navy Marine Mammal Program was formally categorised and moved to a brand new facility at Level Loma close to San Diego. A second facility was additionally established in Hawaii on the Marine Corps Air Station at Kāneʻohe Bay. By the Eighties, the NMMP had a finances of $8 million {dollars} and had educated over 100 dolphins, sea lions, and beluga whales – which might dive deeper and function in colder waters than most different marine mammals. Within the late Eighties and early Nineteen Nineties, Navy dolphins had been deployed to the Persian Gulf to defend Bahraini ports, American warships, and Kuwaiti oil tankers towards Iraqi forces, enjoying a small however key function within the success of Operation Desert Storm. With the tip of the Chilly Conflict, nevertheless, the strategic significance of the Marine Mammal Program declined, and the unit was downsized and finally declassified. But the Navy’s cetacean sailors continued to serve each at house and overseas; throughout the 1996 Republican Conference in San Diego, as an illustration, dolphins patrolled the harbour towards infiltration by overseas brokers or protestors.

As we speak, the Marine Mammal Program has a finances of $40 million and employs 77 dolphins and 47 sea lions – in addition to 54 civilians, six Military veterinary surgeons, 220 contractors, and 22 graduate college students. This system’s animals, which in Navy jargon are known as Superior Organic Weapon Methods or ABWS, are divided into 5 groups, designated Mk.[“Mark”] 4, Mk.5, Mk.6, Mk.7, and Mk.8. Every of those groups makes a speciality of a unique mission. For instance, Mk.4 and Mk.7 use dolphins to find and mark underwater mines, with the Mk.4 dolphins specializing in floating tethered mines and the Mk.7 dolphins in seafloor mines. The dolphins are educated to go looking an space utilizing their pure sonar then return to their handler, utilizing quite a lot of physique actions to speak the kind of object discovered. They’re then given a particular marker buoy, which they use to find the thing for inspection and disposal by Navy EOD groups. Mk.8 dolphins additionally specialise in finding mines, nevertheless, they don’t seem to be educated to mark them, Quite, they’re used to seek out corridors by minefields and different defences and information touchdown craft and different vessels ashore throughout amphibious assaults.

The Mk.6 group is educated for drive safety, utilizing dolphins and sea lions as sentries to defend naval bases towards infiltration by enemy fight swimmers. For this job, dolphins are supplied with a particular machine which they’re educated to connect to the air tanks of any diver they encounter. The machine then deploys a marker buoy fitted with a small explosive cost, which alerts defending forces to the swimmer’s presence. Sea lions carry an identical machine that attaches to a swimmer’s limbs utilizing a handcuff mechanism. Over time, rumours have circulated that NMMP animals have been educated to make use of particular weapons like poison dart weapons to neutralize enemy swimmers – and cue the jokes about “frickin’ sharks with frickin’ laser beams on their frickin’ heads”… Certainly, within the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, sensational headlines introduced that flooding had launched quite a lot of armed dolphins from a Navy facility in Louisiana into the encircling waters…regardless of the truth that no such facility exists. However whereas overseas marine mammal packages could make use of such ways, the U.S. Navy has vehemently denied that it has educated any of its marine mammals for assault, citing the easy indisputable fact that they’d be unable to differentiate between pleasant and enemy divers. Dolphins are additionally extraordinarily empathetic and capable of detect a dying diver’s misery, which means that even when a dolphin may be enticed to kill, it might be unlikely to do it once more. Nonetheless, the mere presence of educated dolphin sentries is usually sufficient to discourage even the hardiest of divers. As Kaj Larsen, a former Navy SEAL explains:

“The reality is, it’s actually some of the efficient methods to forestall assaults by fight divers, as a result of every part else doesn’t actually work. We actually don’t have any technique to defeat a dolphin. You’re of their factor, they usually discover you each single time underwater…It’s scary if you’re at midnight, chilly water and you already know that there’s a big dolphin someplace on the market. It’s undoubtedly a gut-check.”

Lastly, the final NMMP group, Mk. 5, is educated to seek out and get well check gear resembling experimental torpedoes and missiles from the ocean ground. The animals do that both utilizing marker buoys just like the Mk. 4 and seven dolphins, or utilizing a particular “grabber claw” mounted on a harness or mouthpiece that latches onto the thing to be recovered. As soon as connected, the claw deploys both a restoration line or flotation bag to permit the thing to be returned to the floor.

All 5 NMMP groups will be deployed anyplace on this planet with 72 hours’ discover, the animals being transported on particular hammocks suspended in water-filled pens which will be carried aboard ships, cargo plane, and even helicopters. Whereas on obligation, the animals are fitted with an Anti Foraging Gadget or AFD, a muzzle or strip of velcro that forestalls them from opening their mouths and consuming. In line with the Navy, that is to forestall the dolphins from ingesting dangerous objects. One other software utilized by NMMP groups is a “recall pinger”, an ultrasonic noisemaker that dolphins are educated to house in on. That is usually used to seek out and get well misplaced animals who fail to return to base after a mission.

Whereas the NMMP is the oldest and best-known Navy mammal program on this planet, it isn’t the one one. Presently, three different nations are identified or suspected to have comparable packages: Russia, Israel, and North Korea. The Russian program, which started within the Seventies, is the biggest and most numerous on this planet, and is split into two primary initiatives: one based mostly close to Murmansk within the Arctic Ocean using seals and beluga whales, and different based mostly in Sevastopol on the Black Sea utilizing dolphins. The Black Sea group is believed to have been deployed to defend the port of Tartus throughout the Syrian Civil Conflict, whereas on April 23, 2019, a Russian-trained beluga whale appeared off the coast of Norway. Dubbed “Hvaldimir” by the locals, it wore a particular harness considered for a digicam or different sensors, indicating that Russian Navy belugas are primarily used for surveillance.

In line with Dough Cartilage of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, who as soon as visited the “Dolphin Division” base in Sevastopol, Russian Navy dolphins are educated to deploy from plane utilizing specially-designed parachutes and even from helicopters hovering at 50 metres. Cartlidge was additionally proven a nasty little machine designed to be connected to enemy fight swimmers and inject their our bodies with carbon dioxide: “Because the commander there mentioned to me: “That will carry him to the floor.” It will, in fact. However it might be together with his guts spewing out each ends.”

Beautiful…

Russian dolphins have additionally reportedly been armed with knives to assault enemy swimmers, however for the psychological causes beforehand defined, that is unlikely to be efficient. The CO2 injector, then again, will be remotely activated lengthy after the dolphin has connected it, getting round this downside. Israeli and North Korean navy dolphins have allegedly additionally been educated for assault missions, however comparatively little is understood about these packages.

Whereas the NMMP has confirmed remarkably efficient, from the very starting it and comparable packages have come underneath fireplace from animal welfare activists, who argue not solely that the Navy’s therapy of its dolphins and sea lions is merciless, however the very apply of utilizing animals in warfare is unethical. A lot of this criticism is leveled on the small pens the animals are housed in when off-duty and the even smaller containers during which they’re transported to deployment zones. This, activists argue, in addition to transporting the animals to unfamiliar environments midway the world over, induces excessive ranges of stress that may severely impression the animals’ well being and high quality of life. Certainly, when within the Eighties the Navy thought of utilizing dolphins to protect the Trident missile submarine base at Bangor, Washington, they had been sued by activists arguing that shifting the dolphins from California to the colder waters of Washington would hurt the animals. A choose dominated {that a} research needed to be accomplished earlier than the transfer could possibly be carried out, however the Navy finally deserted the mission.

Using Anti-Foraging Gadgets has additionally confirmed controversial. Whereas the Navy maintains that these are supposed to stop animals from ingesting dangerous objects, animal trainers argue that their actual function is to keep up the handlers’ management over the animals, since their coaching relies solely on constructive reinforcement utilizing meals. As Ric O’Barry, a former animal coach who labored on the Nineteen Sixties tv collection Flipper explains:

“When [dolphins] are full, they don’t reply. That is precisely why we had 5 dolphins for the “Flipper” TV collection. When Flipper #1 had ten kilos of meals and was full, I misplaced management, and I’d carry out Flipper #2, and so forth.”

In response, the Navy has identified that its practices are in full compliance with the Marine Mammal Safety Act and the Animal Welfare Acts, that the NMMP is totally accredited by the Affiliation for the Accreditation of Animal Laboratory Animal Care or AAALAC, and us a member of the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums. Nonetheless, whereas the AAALAC units minimal requirements for animal care, it doesn’t limit the makes use of to which mentioned animals are put – and it’s right here that many activists argue the true downside lies. No matter how effectively they’re handled whereas off-duty, whereas deployed, NMMP animals are uncovered to excessive ranges of hazard, largely within the type of unexploded ordnance. Additionally, as it’s typically troublesome to inform a educated navy animal from its wild cousins, the usage of marine mammals in a army capability could encourage enemy nations to kill all such animals round naval bases and different strategic websites as a safety precaution.

Extra essentially, activists argue that since animals don’t have any data of human conflicts and can’t consciously volunteer, ethically they shouldn’t be pressed into army service. After all, the Navy has identified that animals like horses and pigeons have lengthy been utilized in warfare, and that armed forces around the globe make in depth use of canine as sentries, for rescue, and for sniffing out hidden explosives. However in response to Andrew Fenton, a professor of ethics at Dalhousie College, Halifax, the comparability between dolphins and sniffer canine isn’t an correct one.

“We formed these animals to stay in shut quarters with people and we artificially chosen canine to be a part of our social world, and so, we will be a part of their social world. Perhaps given sufficient time, we may create a cetacean breed that matches that standards, but that’s troublesome to foretell. However the extra urgent query is, ought to people cultivate dolphins? If we did, we must severely slender their world…And this, in bioethics, we name hurt.”

One more main controversy considerations the style during which naval animals are retired on the finish of their service lives. In the course of the downsizing of the early Nineteen Nineties, the NMMP diminished its ranks from 103 dolphins all the way down to 70. In response, within the 1992 Defence Appropriations Act, Congress allotted the NMMP half 1,000,000 {dollars} to:

“…develop coaching procedures which is able to enable mammals that are not required for this mission to be launched into their pure habitat.”

Nonetheless, after holding two conferences on the matter, the Navy concluded that such a reintroduction program wouldn’t be cost-effective. The Navy subsequent tried providing the retirees to marine parks, however mentioned parks had already carried out a profitable breeding program, and there have been solely 4 takers. The NMMP was thus left with no alternative however to deal with the dolphins for the remainder of their lives. In 1994, the Navy organized to ship three dolphins to Sugarloaf sanctuary in Key West, run by the aforementioned Ric O’Barry. O’Barry deliberate to reeducate the dolphins and launch them as soon as the suitable federal permits had been obtained, however finally selected to launch them prematurely, arguing that the federal permits had been merely a ploy to forestall the discharge of Navy property, and that ready any longer would jeopardize the dolphins’ probabilities of adapting the wild. Alas, Luther and Buck had been recaptured inside two weeks and returned to the Navy, the place they continue to be to this present day.

In response to such mounting criticisms and logistical difficulties, the Navy has tried to section out its Marine Mammal Program in favour of autonomous drones and different high-tech gear. However, there’s an issue: none of this gear can maintain a candle to the extraordinary skills of dolphins and sea lions. As Scott Savitz, a senior engineer on the Rand Company explains:

“[Marine mammals] provide a lot at a comparatively low value that it appears absurd to not proceed to make use of them, actually within the near-term…We’re at all times 5 years away from supposedly having expertise that can obviate the necessity from having to make use of the mammals. I query whether or not we’re at that time but.

They’ve nice precision in with the ability to differentiate objects which might be just like mines or mines themselves from the huge detritus that’s on the ocean ground in populated areas…Simply as we use canine to seek out medication or explosives, there’s plenty of profit for counting on the pure means of dolphins. We don’t must reinvent one thing we now have a functionality [for] already.”

Even Ric O’Barry, who has opposed NMMP for many years, agrees, stating:

“[Dolphins’] sonar makes our Navy’s greatest sonar system seem like a toy.”

And so, the advantageous finned buddies of the NMMP will proceed to serve their nation till expertise lastly catches up with their pure skills – or till they inevitably depart our planet with a hearty salute of “so lengthy, and thanks for all of the fish.”

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