4 Animals Reported Dead, Others Crippled : Navy’s Dolphin Program Called Brutal

A secret Navy program to train dolphins as underwater security guards is in disarray, with four of the animals dead and others blinded or crippled by abusive handlers, it was reported today.

Unidentified sources, including two former trainers who asked that their names be withheld, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that four of the Navy’s three dozen dolphins have died in the last 18 months.

The former trainers said some of the dolphins have been blinded or have suffered crippling injuries as a result of poor training procedures.

The program, which trains dolphins to hunt for mines and enemy frogmen, leaves the animals vulnerable to infection or illness by moving them from cooler to warmer water and subjects them to other stress, they said.

However, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Craig Quigley told the newspaper that the marine mammal project, which also includes work with sea lions, had been “very successful . . . effective and cost-effective.”

A trainer, Rick Trout, who has worked at the Navy project in San Diego since 1985, told a convention of the International Marine Animal Trainers Assn. in San Antonio this week that he saw “specific incidents of abuse, weight loss, corporal punishment and damage to animals after transport.”

Trainers use “very negative methods, including food deprivation, corporal punishment and other aversive techniques,” Trout said.

The newspaper said one dolphin died last month near Port Townsend, Wash., and two others died earlier in San Diego, where the program is based. Last year, a dolphin died during patrol in the Persian Gulf of what the Navy said was some type of bacterial infection.