Killer Dolphins Loose

A new threat has been discovered for swimmers in the Gulf Coast, and it comes in a cute and harmless-looking package: dolphins. Turns out the US Navy has been training dolphins to shoot posionous darts at shady-looking people that swim around boats and submarines. They have a radio-controlled collar around their necks that gives them directions of some sort, with the added benefit that you can blow the dolphin up if something goes wrong. (back in 1998, a group of US Navy killer dolphins had come to grief off the French Mediterranean coast when they got loose and their handlers detonated a "radio-controlled explosion of their signal collars, so that no one could find out their missions.") The Navy actually has a page for the whole program here. So no, it's not a joke.



A bottlenose dolphin leaps out of the water while training near USS Gunston Hall (LSD 44) in the Arabian Gulf during Operation Iraqi Freedom. It is wearing an acoustic tracking devide on its fin.