Hawai'i-trained Navy dolphins report for mine-clearing duty
Advertiser Staff and News Services
CAMP AS SALIYAH, Qatar — Coalition forces have brought in two Hawai'i-trained Atlantic bottle-nose dolphins to help ferret out mines in the approaches of the port of Umm Qasr, Maj. Gen. Victor Renuart of the Central Command said yesterday.
U.S. Navy via Associated Press
The dolphins will help clear the way for the shipment of humanitarian aid to allied-held southern Iraq, Renuart said.
U.S. Sgt. Andrew Garrett watches an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin attached to Commander Task Unit 55.4.3 work near the USS Gunston Hall in the Persian Gulf last week. The multinational unit clears mines.
The dolphins, named Makai and Tacoma, were flown into Umm Qasr by U.S. Navy helicopters last night and were expected to begin searching for mines today, according to pool reports.
The dolphins are taught to avoid touching the mines, which might cause them to explode, said Capt. Mike Tillotson, a Navy bomb disposal expert. He said there was little risk to animals doing this kind of work. The biggest hazard could come from other indigenous dolphins in the waters of Umm Qasr. Dolphins are territorial and there is a fear local dolphins might drive the interlopers out, causing them to go AWOL.
The Navy started using marine mammals in the early 1960s, when military researchers began looking into how sea mammals' highly developed senses — like dolphins' sonar — could be used to locate mines and do other tasks.
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Some dolphins being used by the U.S. Navy were trained in Hawai'i before the Navy's Marine Mammal Program operation moved from Kaneohe Bay Marine Base to San Diego in 1993, a Navy spokesman said yesterday.
"A whole bunch of our dolphins have Hawaiian names," said Tom Lapuzza, public affairs officer for the Navy Marine Mammal Program in San Diego. "A number of them were collected in the Gulf of Mexico and almost all were flown to Hawai'i, where the basic training and systems were developed."
Hawai'i researchers Louis Herman of The Dolphin Institute in Honolulu and Paul Nachtigall of the University of Hawai'i's Marine Mammal Institute on Coconut Island in Kane'ohe Bay helped develop systems used both by dolphins and sea lions for the Navy, Lapuzza said.
