Ever
since Hannibal of Carthage crossed the Alps using elephants, and Alexander
the Great rode into battle astride his magnificent steed, Bucephalus, animals
have served important roles in warfare.
Today, in the
war with Iraq, specially trained dolphins are being used to locating mines
in the Khor Abd Allah waterway, Iraq's artery to the Persian Gulf.
"The U.S. Navy
has been using marine mammals for more than 30 years. Dolphins are uniquely
suited for numerous missions including mine detection, mine location and
detecting (enemy) swimmers," Lt. Cmdr. John Bernard, a U.S. Navy spokesman
at the Pentagon, told United Press International's Animal Tales. "Marine
mammals help save lives using their natural ability."
An unspecified
number of bottlenose dolphins are working in the waterways of Iraq where
humanitarian aid must pass to get to the Iraqi people.
The British
ship, H.M.S. Sir Galahad, docked Friday at the port town of Umm Qasr to
distribute several hundred tons of humanitarian aid including food, water
and blankets. Its arrival was delayed because of additional mines found
in the waterway.
Deputy Coalition
Maritime Joint Component Commander, Rear Adm. David Snelson of the Royal
Navy, said although many of the mines placed there were from previous conflicts
"there is indication that Iraq has tried to lay new mines to delay the
coalition forces getting aid into the country," according to Jane's Navy
International.
Although land
mines can be less than two inches in diameter and made mostly of plastic,
mines in waterways are larger, about the size of a small trashcan. They
can be tethered by a line or left to float freely.
U.S. Naval Special
Clearance Team One, based in San Diego, trains and handles the Navy's marine
mammal program, in which dolphins find mines and sea lions patrol waterways
for enemy swimmers who might plant explosives on naval vessels.
Some sea lions
have been trained to not only detect an enemy swimmer but to push a foot
cuff on him that marks him and swim away.
As intelligent
as a smart dog and easily trained, dolphins have been used to detect mines
or protect Navy divers since the Vietnam War. The dolphins detect the mines,
which are made of metal. They are trained to mark the mines with floating
buoys. The animals do nothing with the mines; they simply locate them,
mark them with a buoy and U.S. Navy divers detonate the mines after the
dolphins have been removed from the area.
Dolphins find
food and are trained to find mines using "sonar" or, more correctly, bat-like
echolocation, which enables them to "see" with their ears by listening
for echoes.
According to
the Web site SeaWorld.org, dolphins produce
a series of directional clicks, each of which lasts from 50 to 128 microseconds.
The clicks pass through the melon -- a rounded region of a dolphin's forehead
consisting mostly of fats.
"The melon acts
as an acoustical lens to focus these sound waves into a beam, which is
projected forward into water in front of the animal," SeaWorld.org explains.
"Sound waves
travel through water at a speed of about 0.9 mi/sec, which is 4.5 times
faster than sound traveling through air. The sound waves bounce off objects
in the water and return to the dolphin in the form of an echo."
The sounds are
conducted through the lower jaw to the middle ear, inner ear, and then
to hearing centers in the brain via the auditory nerve. The brain receives
the sound waves in the form of nerve impulses, which relay the messages
of sound and enable the dolphin to interpret the sound's meaning, according
to SeaWorld Adventure Parks.
Some of the
dolphins used by the U.S. Navy and other coalition units also carry a camera
attached to their dorsal fin to aid the divers in identifying the type
of mine.
Dolphins are
altruistic and work cooperatively in hunting for food. Males often assist
one another in obtaining a mate, they will support an injured dolphin at
the surface so it can breathe and entire pods will put themselves in jeopardy
to come to the aid of a mother and her calf, according to the Web site
of the Dolphin Research Center in the Florida Keys, Dolphins.org.
Dolphins are
adaptable, feeding on available fish and living almost everywhere in the
oceans except in the polar seas. They also have a long history of working
cooperatively with humans.
In southern
Brazil, bottlenose dolphins have been the initiators of fishing cooperative.
Town records
indicate since 1847, dolphins have alerted the fishermen of Laguna, Brazil,
of "feeding time" by stationing themselves offshore in a line, according
to Dolphins.org.
When a dolphin
leaves the line, swims to sea, returns, stops and dives, the fishermen
know it is time to put out their nets.
"Few fishermen
waste their time casting until instructed to do so by the dolphins' actions
while the dolphins seem to take advantage of the confusion, which results
as the men cast their nets, feeding on their own from the remaining fish,"
said the Dolphin Research Center.
Though the dolphins
are effective mine detectors, organizations such as People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals do not like the idea of dolphins being drafted.
"War is a human
endeavor and innocent animals should not be put in harm's way," Stephanie
Boyles, wildlife biologist for PETA in Washington, D.C., told UPI's Animal
Tales. "Dolphins were meant to live and die in the water and not take plane
trips to the Middle East. To them, finding mines is a game and they don't
know the consequences if they fail."
Boyles does
not question the dolphins and sea lions' treatment by the U.S. Navy, but
she fears the dolphins' mine detection work could give the military a false
sense of security.
"They don't
need to rely on the dolphins. They have other methods to detect mines,"
Boyles said. "There is also no guarantee or even much likelihood that these
animals will save humans and, certainly, our troops deserve the very best
in surveillance."
The U.S. Navy
has ships that can sweep for mines and helicopters that can detect mines
from the air deployed in the Persian Gulf, but it does not reveal the success
rate for the mechanical or dolphin mine detection systems.
However, Bill
McClain, a retired U.S. Navy Seal, who helped develop the dolphin mine
sweeping program in the 1970s, recently told KCRA-TV in Sacramento, Calif.:
"The minesweepers are something like 94 percent effective ... dolphins
were 99.8 percent effective."
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Copyright 2003 by United
Press International.
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