War dolphins to hunt rare peaceful porpoise
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UNITED STATES: The US Navy’s dolphins are highly trained warriors, conditioned to seek out enemy frogmen or mines and help to eliminate them.
Now, though, they have found a more peaceful purpose – to find a peaceful porpoise. And rather than eliminate it, they are going to try to save it.
Since the 1960s America has trained dolphins to identify targets and hazards under water in much the same way as military dogs do on the ground.
Its team of 75 dolphins served with distinction in the Gulf and Iraq wars, using their sonar to help to clear the sea of threats.
The navy has now announced that these dolphins have been retrained for conservation work: helping to prevent the extinction of a fellow cetacean.
The vaquita porpoise is one of the most endangered animals in the world. Scientists believe fewer than 60 exist in the wild, scattered throughout the Gulf of Mexico.
Hit by illegal fishing, the species is at such a low level extinction is inevitable unless action is taken. The vaquitas’ only hope is they can be collected and put into ocean pens, where they can be protected from fishing and their population can have the critical mass to breed.
For this to succeed, conservationists believe they need the help of the dolphins.
Jim Fallon, from the navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Centre, said that if the plan were approved the dolphins would use their sonar to find the elusive porpoises, which emit a distinct signal.
They would then surface and direct their handlers to the animals’ location.
Stars and Stripes, the US military’s newspaper, conceded some environmentalists were against the scheme, on the ground that with the vaquitas removed from the sea there would be even less impetus to prevent illegal fishing.
However, Barbara Taylor, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the plight of vaquitas was so critical that risk simply had to be taken.
‘‘We can’t afford to be slow about this. We have to give this our mightiest effort as quickly as possible.’’ – The Times