For 60 years, the US Navy has been training dolphins and sea lions to keep rivals away from its most sensitive hardware
Gidget Fuentes Dec 29, 2022, 6:11 PM
The US Navy has been training dolphins and sea lions to detect undersea threats since the 1960s.
The Navy wants to move away from its marine mammals and use drones and other new sensors instead.
But those dolphins and sea lions can still do their jobs better than that new technology.
Since 1959, the US Navy has trained a small force of bottlenose dolphins and sea lions to recover lost equipment, intercept intruders in ports, and detect buried sea mines.
This year, the Navy sought to end one of those marine mammals' most important missions — hunting for and neutralizing mines buried in the seabed — and use sophisticated underwater vehicles and sensors instead.
But there's a problem: That technology hasn't yet equaled a dolphin's unique ability to find mines.
So Congress balked, using the 2023 defense bill to bar the Navy from retiring its mine-detecting dolphins or ending port-security training for its marine mammals until it deploys new mine-countermeasure systems that are as good or better.
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-navy-trains-dolphins-sea-lions-to-guard-sensitive-hardware-2022-12
