The Navy’s Underwater Allies

The safe passage of humanitarian aid into Iraqi ports depends partly on some unlikely allies: bottle-nosed dolphins.

The dolphins, trained here by the Navy, work alongside military divers and underwater vehicles to detect mines. It was thanks to a detachment of dolphins that the British supply ship Sir Galahad, carrying the first waterborne military shipment of food and water for Iraqis last month, was able to dock at Umm al Qasr in southern Iraq, officials said.

As the Sir Galahad waited offshore with tons of rice, powdered milk, tomato paste and other food, the dolphins -- carrying large oval mine markers on their backs -- dove repeatedly into the murky water to search for underwater explosives. With their handlers on boats nearby to reward them with food, the dolphins marked the locations of potential mines for troops to recover and detonate.

The dolphins, with names such as K-Dog and Katrina, worked for three days to clear the shipping lanes before the ship steamed into the port on March 28.

“The dolphins’ purpose in life is to clear mines, and that’s what happened,” said Tom LaPuzza, spokesman for the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego.

The teams of divers, dolphins and vehicles have investigated 237 mine-like objects, recovered 90 mines and destroyed 11 mines in the port of Umm al Qasr and the Khor Abd Allah waterway that leads to it, said Lt. Josh Frey, a Navy public affairs officer. So far, the teams have cleared 913 nautical miles of water space, he said.

No troops or dolphins have been killed during the mine clearance, Frey said.

The dolphins are prized because, unlike humans, they can dive repeatedly without getting the “bends,” or compression sickness. They are just the latest animals to join the inter-species coalition in Iraq. Sea lions are on a test mission in Bahrain to help protect the Navy’s special operations. Military dogs are working throughout the Middle East to guard bases and search for bombs. Chickens -- and later pigeons -- were drafted as a backup early-warning system for chemical or biological attacks.

“Animals do things that we can’t do,” said military historian Gregory Urwin, a professor at Temple University.

Animal-rights activists oppose the military’s putting animals in harm’s way. The animals should not be “directly in the line of conflict or where their life or safety would be substantially endangered,” said Karen Colangelo, spokeswoman for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has lobbied political leaders for years to stop the drafting of animals for military use. Stephanie Boyles, a wildlife biologist with the organization, said dolphins view the exercises as games and should not be relied upon to save the lives of troops.

The dolphins “don’t have any concept of war,” she said.

Frey said the dolphins are trained not to touch the mines. They detect the presence of the explosives; humans then dispose of them, and the dolphins are removed from the area before any detonation takes place. Because they are well cared for, they have longer life expectancy than dolphins in the wild, Frey said.

The Navy began working with marine mammals in the early 1960s to determine if their sonar abilities could be useful in military exercises. Navy researchers even trained killer whales to recover objects from deep in the ocean, but decided that hauling the 5,000-pound animals around was too much trouble. Sea lions and dolphins, however, weigh about 400 pounds each and are easy to transport, LaPuzza said.

The dolphins and sea lions now in the Mideast -- officials won’t say how many are there -- were trained at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, where the Navy says it has 75 dolphins and 20 sea lions.

Dolphins trained in other procedures have been used in other conflicts, but this is the first time mine-detecting dolphins have been deployed in a war.

When a dolphin locates a mine, it resurfaces and presses a rubber disk on the side of a boat to notify its handler. Then the handler gives the dolphin a marker, or an acoustic transmitter, to place on the sea floor near the mine. The transmitter emits a warning sound that alerts military personnel to the mine.

Each dolphin is trained for at least three years, but the platoon in the Middle East has much more experience, LaPuzza said.

The sea lions are also in a combat zone for the first time, in a trial run to see how effectively they can find and detain unauthorized divers trying to approach Navy ships or bases. They are trained to sneak up behind the divers and place clamps on their legs before swimming away, Frey said. The clamp is attached to a rope, so the diver can be reeled in like a fish on a hook.

Sea lions are perfect for such tasks, trainers say, because they can see in near darkness and have sensitive underwater hearing.

LaPuzza said he doesn’t worry that the marine mammals might go AWOL. “They are very reliable animals,” he said. Also in the Mideast are roughly 100 German and Belgian shepherds working to detect explosives in vehicles and terrorist bombs in bases and buildings, said Bob Dameworth, manager of the military’s canine program. They are also guarding bases, ammunition storage areas and aircraft parking ramps.

The dogs undergo about eight months of training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio before being assigned to bases around the world. They also have used their strong sense of smell to search for explosives at Super Bowl games and at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Altogether, there are about 1,450 dogs.

“The military working dog is probably the most sensitive, the most user-friendly and the most low-maintenance detection system that the military has ever had or ever will have,” Dameworth said.