Smart and fast, marine mammals are guarding American military bases

[depakid]

Sgt. Andrew Garrett trains a bottlenose dolphin equipped with a tracking device in the Arabian Gulf. While the military has deployed dolphins and other marine mammals since the 1960s, they will be brought to the Trident Submarine Base at Bangor for the first time this fall.
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WE SAW OUR first dolphin in the garage.

Bunsen was lying belly-down on a tarp, where trainers stroked his flesh to keep him calm. The 11-year-old bottlenose dolphin had diarrhea, and physical exams hadn't been able to detect the cause. So Bunsen the dolphin was getting an ultrasound.

One veterinarian watched on a beeping screen as another scanned Bunsen's abdomen. A trainer cooed and slipped the cetacean a mackerel while keeping him moist with squirts from a plastic water bottle.

But this wasn't just some ordinary carport. And Bunsen is no ordinary sea creature. This was the alcove of a military operating theater. And Bunsen is a foot soldier in the Pentagon's global War on Terror.

We'd come to this military outpost in San Diego because this is where the U.S. Navy trains marine mammals to stop invaders. Here, every day, beneath the California sun, dolphins named Bunsen, Slooper, Shasta, Maddie, Crockett, Bugs and Bertha learn to sweep for hidden mines or bump and tag divers pretending to be underwater guerrillas. Fat-whiskered sea lions practice cuffing intruding swimmers with giant leg traps.

Some time this year — the Navy won't say when — up to 20 of these creatures will make their debut in Puget Sound. They'll patrol the waters of Hood Canal, on the lookout for agents of al-Qaida or any other enemy who might try infiltrating the Trident Submarine Base at Bangor.

More (with videos):

[iamthebandfanman]

1. lets just hope its not the japanese who attack. n/t

[Skittles]

2. link?

[Duppers]

3. link

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/pacificnw/2012662209_pacificpdolphins29.html

[Divernan]

4. "Similar patrols began in Georgia" - were they killed by the oil spill?

Reading the long and very interesting article from the link, I was interested to learn the Navy was using dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico since 2006. Hopefully, the Navy has moved those dolphins to an oil free location like San Diego - or maybe those are the ones coming to Puget Sound.

I got to interact with dolphins in Roatan, Honduras. Several wild dolphins had been conditioned to show up at a very large enclosed area of ocean (about 3 football fields in size). The dolphins easily accessed the area by leaping over the mesh walls of the enclosure. In exchange for performing "tricks" and allowing divers to hold them for pictures, they were given food. Then they hung around just to play. "Amazing" is an overused term. Dolphins are really, truly amazing to watch swimming. They swim at speeds from 20 to 40 miles per hour, yet can literally make a right angle turn on a dime.

From the linked article:
"This mission prompts such discomfort in the Northwest that it took the Navy two tries to bring its cetaceans north. (Similar patrols at a base in Georgia began without objection in 2006.) The irony seemed difficult to shake. Those are nuclear warheads housed at Bangor, the most sophisticated and destructive devices in human history. And our first line of defense is an animal we applaud for learning to leap through hoops at theme parks?

But Bunsen and his colleagues had a lesson to impart, one it seems we humans never stop needing to relearn: Technology often can't beat nature's wonders — especially not after 50 million years of evolution."

[Duppers]

5. good question!

I certainly hope they weren't but so many were. Hope their trainers were smarter enough to have gotten them out of there.

I envy your interaction with these revered critters. That's on my bucket list of to-do's.

[phantom power]

6. All I wanted were frikkin dolphins with frikkin lasers attached to their frikkin heads.