Armed Dolphins Released Into Gulf of Mexico 534
An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian is reporting on what may be the weirdest Hurricane Katrina story yet. Military trained dolphins may have been released into the wild by the Hurricane's devastation." From the article: "Experts who have studied the U.S. navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The U.S. navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing. Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The U.S. Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the U.S. defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly."
Re:Sound a little fishy to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
Movie plot (Score:5, Insightful)
could be... (Score:5, Insightful)
And every military aircraft that flies 'could be' carrying nuclear weapons.
But they arent.
Fear mongering (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone is fear mongering.
Oh, ok. Right. This is believable. (Score:5, Insightful)
Please. What a craptastic, misleading headline for Slashdot. I don't comment much here on Slashdot but in the name of all that is holy, who posts this crap?
At least it's not a dupe, yet.
Re:they are smart , but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:don't mess with the dolphins (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Movie plot (Score:5, Insightful)
Out of many thousands of miles of U.S. coastline, they picked New Orleans, which is below sea level and prone to flooding;
They were not smart enough to evacuate these valuable and dangerous animals before the hurricane;
They didn't bother to remove the weapons from the animals;
They didn't even think to UNLOAD the weapons. Apparently, these dolphins swim around fully armed, 24-7!
Paranoid conjecture, no facts, great story! (Not.) (Score:1, Insightful)
hmm, lotta "mays" there... Let's see who it is making the claims...
Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest.
"Experts"? What "experts"? Who says they are? What makes them an "expert"? What are their qualifications? And this isn't something they know, they're just "claiming" it's possible. Oh, OK, it's on the internet, it must be true...
The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the US defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly.
"Apparently" - more conjecture. The compound was breached and they were swept to sea, the article claims, yet without any corroboration yet. So they *know* this? Or they are just stating it as a fact that you, the gullible reader, wants to believe, wants to trust in? Hey, it makes for a great story, right?!?
"Leo Sheridan, 72, a respected accident investigator who has worked for government and industry, said he had received intelligence from sources close to the US government's marine fisheries service confirming dolphins had escaped."
Oh, I'm sorry! "Leo" said so, and he worked for the gov't in some nebulous capacity, so you *know* you can trust him, right!?! And, even if he's not "experts", well, he is an "expert", right? And we aren't really concerned with that sort of thing - what's it called - um, "accuracy" - here in this story are we? Anyway, we have to know that Leo is right and just and honest, especially since he has "sources", and we all know that anonymous sources are unimpeachable, a la the NYT, a paragon of reporting honesty and non-bias. Just like the Guardian is, apparently...
"'My concern is that they have learnt to shoot at divers in wetsuits who have simulated terrorists in exercises. If divers or windsurfers are mistaken for a spy or suicide bomber and if equipped with special harnesses carrying toxic darts, they could fire,' he said."
What a great guy Leo is! He is "concerned" - that is, he doesn't know this to be true, it just worries him. What a wonderful person, to be worrying about all those folks he doesn't know who might possibly - if the story is true, and if a dolphin has a harness on (yet another unconfirmed, conjectural supposition) and if that dolphin thinks this stranger to Leo is a terrorist then the dolphin might put said stranger to sleep and they might not be found for hours and might die. OMG! It's almost certain!!!
Let's hope the dolphins were made secure before the storm, because we don't have a clue if they were or not, just like we don't have a clue even if they are out there, just like we don't have a clue if they are that they might be wearing harnesses with supposed toxic darts that, just like we don't have a clue they might even use against some innocent! But man, what a hell of a military bashing story this is! w00t!
"The mystery surfaced when a separate group of dolphins was washed from a commercial oceanarium on the Mississippi coast during Katrina. Eight were found with the navy's help, but the dolphins were not returned until US navy scientists had examined them."
Oh, those nasty nasty military guys! You know they are always up to some bad, bad purpose! Be very careful if you ever see one! They carry guns, some of them! Yeesh!
A whole year already? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:they're not always 'learning' what you think... (Score:5, Insightful)
The most critical part about retrieving them is not that they *could* "attack" divers with their head-mounted laser beams (where are those sharks when you need them), but that they've been captive-raised all their lives, much like the dolphins at the SeaWorld parks.
Re:Easy solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Marine biologists were baffled but Leo Sheridan proposed the only explanation that has not yet been dismissed. "I am convinced that these were dolphins trained by the US Navy and that something went badly wrong,
I am convinced it was done by aliens hiding on the Canary islands... can't dismiss that either. See, it's easy to say something is the result of some secret project: Since all the evidence you would need to prove your case is secret, of course you can't provide any evidence.
In fact it was 1989 when the U.S. Navy began its classified Cetacean Intelligence Mission.
Well, if you trot over to the program's official web page [navy.mil], you can see they have been training toothed whales since 1962. And once again, how does he know the specifics of something supposedly top secret (but with an official web page, of course)? Maybe it began in 1987, and it's even more advanced!
Speculation is fun, but when you do it too much and for too long you simply start seeing patterns that aren't really there. You start believing anything that fits your pattern, even when far simpler explanations fit equally well. Occam's Razor goes out the window. I wonder what Sheridan thinks of the movie A Beautiful Mind [imdb.com].
Re: could be... (Score:5, Insightful)
Naval Dolphin Trainer 2: Yeah?
Naval Dolphin Trainer 1: The mother of all hurricanes is about to come down on us.
Naval Dolphin Trainer 2: So?
Naval Dolphin Trainer 1: You think we should strap-up our dolphins with a full rack of poison dart guns right about now?
Naval Dolphin Trainer 2: Hey dude! Good idea! *goes off to the munitions locker*
Now I know the military can be stupid sometimes, but surely not stupid enough to have their trained killer dolphins armed up during an incoming major hurricane?
Seriously?
Re:Movie plot (Score:1, Insightful)
Sounds like fun.
Re:don't mess with the dolphins (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Easy solution (Score:5, Insightful)
The first two google hits are for other people, but the third one is this [bbhmg.com]. It appears to be a story about Leo leading a team of divers that claimed in the press that they found the long-lost plane wreck of Amy Johnson. However when questioned directly by officials in London, they said they hadn't actually found anything. That was in 2003 and nothing additional seems to have happened. So, while I was honestly trying to find out more about Leo, the first hit seeems to indicate he likes to make bold exagerations when speaking to the press. This isn't helping my confidence...
Nothing on the Navy page you point to dilutes Sheridan's account of a classified program. That is to say, the existence of open source and/or declassified programs and material says nothing about whether a classified program exists.
Actually it has lots of interesting tidbits, such as this: "Why have there been so many rumors about the NMMP over the years? Several decades of classification of the program's true missions of mine-hunting and swimmer defense, led to media speculation and animal activist charges of dolphins used as offensive weapons, speculation and charges that could not be countered with facts due to that classification. Additionally, fantasy is often times more interesting than reality. With declassification of the missions of the program in the early 1990s, the Navy has repeatedly and openly discussed those missions, but rumors are not easily forgotten, and there are those who continue to actively promote them."
So it was classified, but it isn't anymore. Now, they could easily be lying, but I don't know why I should trust Leo any more than the Navy. In fact I don't trust either in the absence of any proof, which argues for the Null Hypothesis.
SZ, have you ever heard of a straw man?
Have you ever heard of failure of proof of the negative is not proof of the positive? Why *must* it be true that dead dolphins killed by explosions were part of a secret Navy program gone awry? If the dead dolphins had "US NAVY" stamped on them, that would be one thing, but instead we simply had evidence that they were killed in the same unusual way. That raises the following questions:
- Why would the Navy test something in the Mediterranean unless they were sure it would work?
- If the dolphins could not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands, why didn't they keep them in holding tanks during transit? (like the ones they used for the Katrina dolphin rescue)
- Why use dolphins to guard a fleet in transit, when there is no risk from divers? Navy ships can travel at 30 knots, so you don't have to worry about anyone swimming up to your vessel.
- Why not design the device to fall off of the dolphin into the sea rather than explode and kill the dolphin? It's not like the dolphins are going to swim up and sell their secrets to a foreign goverment.
- Why couldn't these belong to a foreign government's navy? After years of information about the US program, and the relatively low budget required, why wouldn't navies test this idea?
- Why use dolphins at all for offensive operations, when the Navy's published research indicates that sea lions are far better for this purpose? (Dolphins are only used for mine hunting now, security and "force protection" against divers is provided by sea lions)
Here's an alternative: Dolphins get trapped in fishing nets all the time in that sea (see here [bbc.co.uk]). Maybe some fishermen were bored and hated dolphins enough to kill all the ones landing in their nets with explosives. Or maybe they were part of a secret ritu
Re: could be... (Score:3, Insightful)
Are they stupid enough to keep armed dolphins? You tell me.
Re:Sound a little fishy to me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Information on Marine Mammal Systems (Score:2, Insightful)
Not that I welcome the Navy using mammals but you cannot really compare them to mines.
you know where they are (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sound a little fishy to me. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:OT: Your .sig (Score:3, Insightful)