Attack of the killer dolphins?

DAVID HAMBLING asks if there’s any truth behind the claims about Israeli-trained dolphin assassins

In January, the Palestinian military group Hamas released a video claiming that Israel used trained dolphins to kill swimmers, presenting in evidence a harness supposedly taken from one such dolphin. In 2015 Hamas claimed the Israeli Defence Force was using spy dolphins, and the new story received much the same mocking response from the media. The official State of Israel account sarcastically Tweeted eight dolphin emojis. But could there be some truth in it?

A Wikipedia page devoted to “Israelrelated animal conspiracy theories” includes a kestrel captured by Hezbollah, a vulture in Lebanon, shark attacks off Egypt, wild boars, rats and even lizards supposedly sent to spy on Iranian nuclear sites. Clearly there is paranoia at work, with any animal with a tag assumed to be carrying a ‘spy microchip’ or similar nefarious device. Killer dolphins certainly look like part of the same pattern.

Dolphins are famously playful and friendly creatures. For thousands of years they have swum alongside boats, riding the bow wave and leaping for the sheer joy if it. There are numerous accounts of dolphins rescuing swimmers in trouble, summoning help or driving off sharks. Organised swimming with dolphins is a popular activity, sometimes with quasi-mystical overtones. All of which makes killer dolphins seem even less likely.

Military dolphins have a long pedigree though, with the US Navy’s Marine Mammal Program going back to the 1960s (see FT381:10-11). Dolphins can swim deeper and faster than scuba divers, making them valuable for marking or retrieving items from the seabed, as well as in a security role.

“Both dolphins and sea lions also assist security personnel in detecting and apprehending unauthorized swimmers and divers that might attempt to harm the Navy’s people, vessels, or harbour facilities,” according to a US Navy official page.

The Mark 6 Mod 1 Marine Mammal System is a dolphin trained to find and tag enemy swimmers. When the dolphin locates an enemy diver, it comes back to its handler’s boat and rings a bell. The trainer places a conical marker buoy over the dolphin’s snout. The dolphin then ‘tags’ the swimmer with the buoy, which floats to the surface, flashing a strobe light to mark the location for the security team – but nothing more than that.

“The Navy does not now train, nor has it ever trained, its marine mammals to harm or injure humans in any fashion or to carry weapons to destroy ships,” according to an official statement. Rumours and leaks about a ‘swimmer nullification program’ suggest otherwise.

James Fitzgerald, who worked on the Navy’s dolphin programme in the 1960s, claimed some were trained to tackle intruders, although fairly gently. “We trained them to either pull the mouthpiece of the regulator from the diver’s mouth or push him to the surface,” said Fitzgerald. “Then the dolphin would hit a response paddle hanging from a buoy that would trigger an alert signal. Between a man and a dolphin, there was no contest.”

Others suggested some dolphins were more dangerous. Brandon Webb, in his memoir about life as a Navy SEAL, says they practised evading ‘enemy’ combat dolphins. In the exercise these were dolphins trained “to track down enemy divers, with a device strapped onto the head that contains a [simulated] compressed gas needle. Once the dolphin has tracked you down, it butts you; the needle shoots out and pokes you, creating an embolism. Within moments, you’re dead.”

Former Navy dolphin trainer Michael Greenwood described dolphins fitted with “large hypodermic syringes loaded with pressurised carbon dioxide”, which would cause enemy divers to literally blow up.

When cetacean expert Doug Cartlidge visited the Russian facility in Sevastopol to advise on dolphin care after their military dolphin programme was wound down, he also found that some of the dolphins had been trained to attack swimmers. Their weapon was a harness carrying a 2000 psi CO2 cylinder tipped with a hollow needle.

Ramming with their bony snout is dolphins’ natural means of defence, and even sharks fear them. Dolphins are agile and move at high speed and can outmanoeuvre a shark and ram its soft underside, causing severe internal damage or death. While dolphins could be trained to attack human swimmers like this, it would create a potential risk to anyone in the water. Training with a dummy device is far safer, as the dolphins are only dangerous when armed with a live weapon. And as far as the dolphin is concerned, it is just a game of tag.

While none of the descriptions mention it by name, the weapon sounds like the Shark Dart developed by Farallon for US Navy divers in the 1970s for defence against marine predators. The commonest type was a slim dagger, with a CO2 cartridge in the handle and a long hollow needle for a blade; there was also a spear. Stabbing a shark injected high-pressure gas into its body, affecting its buoyancy and forcing it to break off the attack without leaving much blood in the water. In practice the effects were said to be gruesome, with stories of internal organs forced out of sharks’ mouths.

The harness shown by Hamas is configured for just this type of weapon, although no gas cylinder or needle were recovered.

The Centre for Applied Animal Behaviour for Security Purposes at Tel Aviv University is best known known for its work with sniffer dogs, but has also worked with various other types of animal. In recent years these have apparently included dolphins, so a military dolphin programme seems more than possible. And the IDF has tangled with Hamas divers before, putting up underwater barriers and deploying special sonar to intercept scuba divers involved in terrorist attacks.

Nature has equipped dolphins as superb underwater guard dogs, and it would hardly be surprising if the IDF used them in that role. Dolphins may naturally be lovable aquatic acrobats, but the evidence suggest they can easily be trained, although unwittingly, as killers, and Hamas’s claim might not be as ridiculous as it first seems.

When the dolphin locates an enemy diver, it comes back to its handler and rings a bell