Ding Dong Dolphin Delivery

Marine mammals have been a part of the entertainment business worldwide, yet their latest contributions have been to the military. Sea Lions and dolphins, particularly Bottlenose, are trained primarily by the U.S. navy to scout out underwater areas, carry supplies to and from bases, and occasionally act as bomb squads in potentially hostile waters. "Dolphins and sea lions are typically used because they are physically robust, do well under human care, and are highly trainable," explained Dr. Dorian Houser, founder of Biomimetica, an organization conduction research in physiology, ecology and bio-acoustics. Houser and his team contract with the military to conducting work with marine mammals.

The U.S. Navy's Marine Mammal Program (NMMP) supports Houser's claims, "Dolphins and sea lions are highly reliable, adaptable and trainable marine animals that [can] be conditioned to search for, detect and mark the location of objects in the water." NMMP was founded in 1959 and has been working with dolphins and sea lions ever since.

NMMP continues to develop new ways to employ dolphins and sea lions in areas of the ocean where humans are not able to work for long periods of times. Dolphins and sea lions work for NMMP, while at the same time NMMP studies them to increase their understanding of marine mammal behavior, well-being and abilities. According to spawar.navy.mil, "…the U.S. Navy has found that the biological sonar of dolphins, called echolocation, makes them uniquely effective at locating sea mines so they can be avoided or removed." Sea lions and other marine mammals have been 'employed' by the U.S. Navy for scouting out sea mines as well as retrieval services by NMMP. NMMP researches ways in which marine mammals can be used to assist the military, while studying the animals at the same time to gain a better understanding of how to protect them from man-made hazards.

The U.S. Navy first used dolphins during the Sea Lab II project in La Jolla, CA. "The dolphin named Tuffy completed several routines of carrying mail and tools to navy servicemen and women." Mine Action, a journal on military activities, also posted articles on Dolphin activity with the military, particularly in the War in Iraq; In the first months after arriving in Iraq, the dolphin teams completed several successful missions, including unofficial clearance of 913 nautical miles of water, investigation of 237 objects, and recovery and/or destruction of over 100 mines.

Houser described training methods in this way, "marine mammals are trained using positive reinforcement - they are rewarded for performing a task. Typically, the primary reinforcement is fish. However, secondary reinforces can also be used, such as a rub down, or something else the animal likes." Houser compared primary reinforcement to similar ways in which dogs are trained to perform tricks at shows or in homes; yet marine mammals are not dogs, they are complex ocean-living creatures who are able to naturally accomplish actions in their daily lives humans and dogs are in incapable of performing without scuba equipment.