Defender Dolphins: A Brief History of the U.S. Navy’s First Marine Mammal Swimmer Defense System

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Now there are more than animals in the service. Navy officials would not comment on whether there has been a specific threat to the Washington base that would prompt increased security but said that utilizing the marine mammals was part of a comprehensive effort to augment security forces from terrorist threats. Though the marine mammals were captured from the wild in the early years of the program, since the late s, the program has bred its dolphins in-house at its training facility in San Diego and buys young sea lion pups from marine parks, said Mark Xitco, who heads up all the marine mammal training and care for the program.

When out on patrol, the animals are accompanied by handlers in small power boats. If a dolphin senses an intruder, like a swimmer or a diver, it swims up to the boat and touches a sensor to alert a handler. Then, if the handlers and military personnel decide it is necessary to investigate the threat further, the handler will place a strobe light or a noisemaker on the dolphin's nose, LaPuzza said.

The dolphin is trained to swim to the intruder, bump him or her from behind—which would knock the device off its nose—and then quickly swim away while military personnel take over. Sea lions are trained to maneuver slightly differently.

Individual sea lions are trained to swim up to an intruder with a cuff held in the sea lion's mouth and bump up against the intruder's leg, at which point the cuff will snap shut. Then the intruder can be reeled in with an attached tether the animal left with military personnel.

Training the animals is very similar to training a dog to chase a ball, explained Chris Harris, a civilian Navy employee who works as a trainer at the San Diego facility. The animals get a food reward, and we give both tactical and words of praise," he said. They start training dolphins born in their program within the first few weeks of life, he said. What kind of standard is this? Any captive dolphin facility can easily exceed it.

The standards for keeping dolphins in captivity in the United States were made up by marine mammal scientists and veterinarians who were working for the dolphin captivity industry.

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These dolphin tanks and cages were not designed in the best interest of the animals. They were designed in the best interest of those who stood to make a profit from displaying captive dolphins. Don't expect the government agencies of the United States to do the right thing when it comes to captive dolphins. The bottom line is: The system doesn't work. They want to use this information to argue with the authorities that the size of the facility they are fighting is too small and therefore must be shut down or at least made bigger.

But any tank or enclosure is too small for a dolphin. Dolphins are free-ranging marine mammals that would normally swim up to 40 miles per day. Our work is not about making the cage bigger. It's about abolishing the cage. So the answer to the question is simple: The only habitat that meets a dolphin's space requirements is - the open sea. There has been much debate about the longevity of captive dolphins compared with that of dolphins in the wild. Some animal welfare organizations publicize mortality statistics as if they were based on indisputable facts.

For example, they will tell you that the average lifespan of captive bottlenose dolphins is about five years compared with 45 years in nature. This statement is highly misleading, first of all because it confuses average lifespan with maximum longevity: According to some researchers, 45 years is the maximum longevity of bottlenose dolphins in the wild, not the average lifespan life expectancy. Secondly, nobody really knows the exact average lifespan of captive dolphins.

In order to know this information one would need to have access to the records for every single dolphin that has been brought into captivity worldwide since , either by the means of a capture or through captive breeding. One would have to know the exact time of capture or birth and the exact time of death. It is simply not possible to gather this information, as it is not made available to us by the dolphin captivity industry.

What's more, even if were factual that dolphins last only about five years in captivity, this doesn't tell us anything about how old the dolphins were at their time of death. As you can see, it makes no sense to compare average lifespan and maximum life expectancy as seen in the statement above. However, the biggest mistake in putting so much emphasis on captive dolphins' average lifespan compared with that of dolphins in nature is the fact that it reduces this issue to being a question of how long a captive dolphin can be kept alive.

It's like saying that if the dolphin captivity industry were able to keep their dolphins alive for a certain amount of time, then there wouldn't be a problem with capturing and confining these animals. But an animal's life span cannot be used as a measurement for the animal's well being. The dolphin captivity issue is not about quantity of life; it's about quality of life, not about science, but ethics. Dolphin Project is aware that some captive dolphin facilities are trying to appear politically correct by displaying captive born dolphins.

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But we strongly oppose captive breeding. It is imperative to consider the ethics and educational value of breeding dolphins in captivity. Some dolphins have been confined within the same barren walls of a concrete tank all their lives. They think the roof is the sky and have never experienced the simplest elements of nature, such as the natural rhythms of the sea, the sunshine, and the rain. They will never swim in a straight line for as long as they desire; nor will they ever be able to use their speed, intelligence, sonar, and sense of cooperation to catch live fish.

They are freaks that we have created for our own amusement, and they have no positive educational value. DAT has become a lucrative business over the last years and presents a serious threat to the welfare of dolphins, in that it creates further violent captures of dolphins worldwide.

DAT takes advantage of desperate and vulnerable parents who pay large sums of money to give their ill or disabled children what the billion-dollar dolphin captivity industry advertises as a life-enhancing dolphin experience. But there is no scientific evidence to substantiate the claim that spending time in a tank or sea enclosure with dolphins has a healing effect on people. Even if there was, could this really justify the high price that dolphins pay for our desire to be close to them? We find that it is inherently hypocritical to capture and confine dolphins - thereby destroying the quality of their lives - in an attempt to enhance our own.

When considering whether or not using dolphins to heal people is acceptable, it is important to note the following:. Dolphins are free ranging, social, sonic, and highly intelligent marine mammals. The vastness and biological diversity of the open sea cannot be duplicated in a tank or an enclosure in the sea. Consequently, the complexity of a dolphin's behavioral repertoire cannot be accommodated in captivity. Based on today's knowledge of Cetaceans' sophisticated physiology and highly developed emotional sense, one must conclude that confining dolphins and other whales to a small space inevitably causes stress in the animals.

This negative effect of captivity is reinforced by the fact that dolphins used in Swim-With-The-Dolphins programs and DAT programs have to be trained by the means of food control to endure the constant pressure of being used as pets and "healers. It is hardly surprising that dolphins used in swim programs have demonstrated agitated and aggressive behaviors under the stressful conditions of confinement and forced interactions with people. These behaviors have resulted in injury to swimmers. A pound frustrated animal can cause serious injury to a human being, and there are accounts of human injuries in the form of lacerations, tooth rakes, internal injuries, broken bones and shock.

The trick is to expose the people who need to be exposed as much as possible, without getting sued. During interviews and in your printed material don't let your enthusiasm exceed the facts. Neither should you assume that quoted material you've found in the media is correct. It would be correct to say that John Doe was quoted saying "Such and such" in a certain edition of a periodical, but not that he actually said it. If you need to know whether he actually said it or not, you should verify it with him directly.

And even then, it would not necessarily survive cross-examination in a court of law unless you can prove it with a witness who would back you up. Watch out for libel. But don't be paralyzed by it. I'm not a lawyer, but I have a working theory about libelous statements in the United States: If you deal in facts and your motives are pure, don't worry about it.

Libel is too complicated to examine here except in a cursory way. You should know, however, that libel is not merely a false statement. Libel is a statement that is published meaning circulated to the public and injures somebody's reputation. Your reputation is what other people think of you. What you write in a private letter is not libelous because it's not published.

You also cannot libel the dead or anyone with a bad reputation. And it's very difficult to libel a public figure, the reason being that he put himself in the public eye and must take the risk of criticism. As a practical matter, any statement that might injure anyone's reputation should be checked and rechecked.

If the statement is true and you can prove it, go ahead and use it if you need to. Truth and a lack of malice is an absolute defense to charges of libel, provided you can prove it and there was a good reason to publish it in the first place. In order for the person libeled to collect in a court of law, he must show prove that the statement led directly to his financial loss.

Try to enlist the help of a pro-bono lawyer. If you have the money, hire one that is interested in these issues. Sometimes we have so much material that strongly indicates mistreatment of dolphins, we can go directly to the police or prosecuting attorney. In either case you will be expected to cite the law or regulation you claim is being broken and who broke it, when and where. If your information doesn't support criminal charges, it may be strong enough for the media. Send a press release to all newspapers and TV stations in the area.

They all have reporters interested in legitimate environmental subjects. Generally they're leery of a story that could backfire into a lawsuit that would cost them money - even if they win it.

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So you can expect them to be skeptical at first. And if they suspect that your information is not completely accurate, they'll show you the door. We need facts, but the main thrust of our campaign is moral. We're saying that keeping dolphins in captivity is wrong. Our objective is to shut down captive dolphin facilities and stop any further captures and exploitation of dolphins.

Ultimately, what we want to do is free captive dolphins; return them to the wild if possible. Not all captive dolphins can be successfully released back into the wild, of course. Some dolphins have been in captivity too long and sometimes they've forgotten even how to catch a life fish or eat one. Can we tell whether a captive dolphin can make it in the wild or not?

We don't do it by training them to be free dolphins, incidentally. But we can give them a chance for rehabilitation by weaning them away from everything human beings have taught them and reacquainting them with the skills they depended on as dolphins in nature. If they succeed, they're candidates for freedom. We release them, monitor them till we're sure they're okay in the wild, and then go on to the next case. For those who are not candidates, we can try to transfer them to protective custody. Dolphin Project would like to establish a dolphin sanctuary for these particular dolphins.

If the media turns its back on you, consider going public with a demonstration.

Dolphins with Jobs

Because a protest involves a direct contact of emotional opposites, anything could happen during a demonstration. We try to script them to keep control of things.

We tell police officials in advance what we're going to do so that nobody will get bopped on the head. But nobody really knows what will happen during a protest, and that's one of the main reasons the media covers demonstrations. Though the media has turned us down in terms of a straight news or feature story, the main job of the media is still to report what people do. And that includes a staged event. It's worth covering because something truly newsworthy might happen. And if they don't cover the protest and their opposition does, they are caught off guard if something does happen. The main reason, though, is that in the back of their minds they know that real news usually begins from inside when disaffected whistle-blowers go public.

And when the media refuse to listen to whistle-blowers, they do so at their peril. Protesters are trying to alert the public to a legal or moral problem and a governmental cover up. They blow the whistle in protesting, and when the media covers it, the job is done. Looking back, we were successful in closing several captive dolphin facilities in the United States, some in Australia, Canada, the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and other places around the world.

There's an important point here that needs to be mentioned: Almost all of these facilities were closed because caring people showed up to protest and demonstrate their concern. If protesting was not part of the campaign, these facilities would still be open for business today, and the suffering would continue. I mention this because some animal protection organizations and individuals don't want to participate in any kind of protest.

Some won't participate because they are following the policy of the conservative organization that they work for. Others seem to think that protesting is undignified or below them. Personally, I don't like protesting either, it goes against my very nature. I don't like bringing attention to myself. But it's necessary and important, so I do it anyhow. It's important to understand that protesting really works. Many times it's the only thing that works.

For example, in the United States the dolphin captivity industry stopped capturing dolphins because of a small handful of protesters that were not afraid to disrupt the dolphin captures. We started protesting these captures, even to the point of getting arrested, going to jail and then on a hunger strike to bring attention to the problem.

This is called civil disobedience. It attracted the media who, for the first time, exposed that fact that the captivity industry in the United States was capturing Florida dolphins and selling them to deplorable facilities abroad. We called this campaign "Export Oranges, Not Dolphins. Eventually, the captivity industry backed off and announced that they were observing a "voluntary moratorium" on all dolphin captures.

The capture of dolphins in the United States was finally over. Why did this happen? The answer is simple: And the media only showed up because they were attracted by the protesters. Most of these programs are still heavily classified, but over the decades some details have leaked out, giving us some idea of what they do and how they do it.

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The Navy's initial interest in dolphins was centered around submarines. The US was building and deploying nuclear-armed Polaris missile submarines, and thought that by studying dolphins, engineers could learn how to make their subs more streamlined, faster, and quieter. In a military team was sent to collect data from the dolphins at Marineland in California. At this time, most people knew "dolphins" only from the TV show "Flipper" and from performing shows at tourist aquariums. The Navy liked the idea, and soon captured a number of wild Pacific White-Sided Dolphins and Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphins in later years the Navy began captive-breeding its own marine mammals and started training them.

Most of the training happened in California, while cold-water operations were conducted in Alaska. Training a dolphin isn't much different than training a dog. The most effective process is called "positive reinforcement". The desired actions are broken down into a series of simple steps which are then taught individually and later strung together. When the trainee animal performs the desired action, it is rewarded with a food treat or with lavish social attention.

And when the trainee fails to perform the requested action, there is no coercion or punishment--instead the animal is simply ignored.

Over time, the animal learns to perform on request a number of complex tasks. A typical dolphin would spend five or six years in training, and individual dolphins were specialized in different military programs. Over the years more species of marine mammal such as California sea lions, orcas or "killer whales" , belugas, and pilot whales, which could dive deeper, swim further, were more maneuverable, or were physically stronger than dolphins, were added to the training.

The first known use of a military-trained dolphin was in As part of its SEALAB project to carry out longterm underwater research, the US Navy had a number of divers living for weeks at a time in an ocean-floor module off the coast of California. One of the dolphin trainees, named Tuffy, was taught to deliver mail to the underwater "aquanauts".

But when the US began its involvement in Vietnam, the Navy's ambitions expanded rapidly. Various groups of dolphins were separated into different projects, each with its own particular military task. We only know about a few of them.

The project known as MK4 trained dolphins to find naval anti-ship mines that were tethered to the sea floor, and mark them with an electronic locator or floating buoy for later destruction. Project MK5 taught California sea lions to find various sorts of objects on the seafloor--things like torpedoes, mines, and bombs, and, some rumors say, lost nuclear weapons--and attach "grabber" devices with cables so they could be recovered.

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