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Jake, Navy Dolphin Trained to Find Torpedoes, Dies at 20

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<i> From Associated Press</i>

A 20-year-old dolphin trained to hunt mines, sniff out enemy swimmers and retrieve torpedoes for the Navy has died of a stomach infection.

Jake, a bottlenose dolphin that the Navy donated to a Florida sanctuary and then retrieved after an illegal relocation effort, died during emergency surgery on Wednesday, the Navy said.

“It was from natural causes, there’s no doubt about that,” Navy spokesman Tom LaPuzza said.

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Jake and two other military-trained bottlenose dolphins were retired and donated to the Sugarloaf Dolphins Sanctuary in the Florida Keys in late 1994. They were among about 20 animals offered to marine parks and aquariums after the Navy began downsizing its marine mammal programs.

However, Jake and another dolphin named Luther were returned to Navy pens at Point Loma in 1996 after the animals were illegally released offshore and later found undernourished, underweight and dehydrated.

A third bottlenose dolphin named Buck was removed from Sugarloaf about the same time and remains at a private research facility elsewhere in Florida, LaPuzza said.

Jake’s stomach infection apparently was caused by a lesion on his stomach lining that was discovered during an ultrasound test on Tuesday. Navy veterinarians were trying to remove excess stomach fluid when the weakened animal went into cardiac arrest.

“We’re sorry he’s dead, but that’s the way it goes,” LaPuzza said. “Animals in the wild get these lesions and probably die from them all the time.”

Navy experts were studying tissue samples to try to determine what caused the lesion.

LaPuzza said antibiotics normally would have been used to kill the infection but could not be used with Jake because of potential reinfection once he was returned to his saltwater habitat.

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