http://www.austin360.com/aas/news/iraq/0303/0326dolphins.html
Not only dogs get drafted in the wars of humankind.
New kind of Navy SEAL is a dolphin
Marine mammal corps will help sweep Iraqi port for mines
By Bob Keefe
WEST COAST BUREAU
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
SAN DIEGO — Marines and sailors from this military town have been deploying to the Middle East for months, but now the U.S. Navy's latest fighting force is getting ready to see action.
The Navy said Tuesday it will begin using dolphins to locate underwater mines in the Persian Gulf for ordnance specialists to clear. Several of the animals will begin searching for mines in the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr in the coming days and weeks to create a safe harbor for warships and humanitarian aid vessels.
Trainers at the Navy's Marine Mammal Program have been teaching Atlantic bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions for decades in the waters of San Diego Bay and elsewhere in California. Although the animals have been used for detecting enemy swimmers as far back as the Vietnam War, this is the first time they'll be used to find enemy mines, Navy spokesman Tom LaPuzza said.
Animal rights groups immediately decried the Navy's plans.
"We're not going to second-guess the military at a time of war. We know our soldiers are in harm's way," said Naomi Rose, marine mammal scientist at the Humane Society of the United States. "But on the other hand, at least they know that. These dolphins don't."
The Navy dolphins not only will be exposed to the dangers of a war zone, but they also are more susceptible to illness and stress-related injuries when they are transported around the globe in slings and portable tanks, Rose said.
LaPuzza would not say how many of the Navy's more than 70 dolphins were sent by plane to the Middle East in the past several weeks. But he denied they would be in any serious danger.
The mammals are looking for magnetic mines, he said. "The dolphins going by them aren't going to set them off. They only go off when a big ship goes by."
Using their natural sonar systems, dolphins can detect mines and other objects hundreds of yards away that human divers couldn't see just a few feet from their face.
In their training, dolphins are taught to search for mines and then swim to an awaiting boat. If they sense there are mines, they press a rubber disk on one side of the boat; if they don't detect any, they press a disk on the other side.
The dolphins, as well as Navy sea lions, also can drop floating tethers to mark nearby mines and can even wrap restraints around enemy swimmers until Navy divers can confront them.
At least in training, LaPuzza said, the mammals' accuracy in finding mines is impeccable.
"Our feeling is that they're 100 percent accurate as long as they're trained properly," he said.