DAILY EXPRESS, DECEMBER 1, 1977
Squads of dolphins trained to kill enemy divers with gas guns, have already been used to defend American naval bases.
TESTIMONY TO THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES, NOVEMBER, 1977
(i) James Fitzgerald, former Chief of the Office of Dolphin Research, Central Intelligence Agency:
“With their built-in sonar the dolphins detected enemy demolition divers on sabotage missions. They impaled them with hypodermic needles connected to carbon-dioxide cartridges. The frogmen just blew up and exploded.”
(ii) Spokesman for the Office of Naval Research:
“Some sixty North Vietnamese frogmen were nullified by our dolphins.”
(iii) James Mullen, ex-trainer:
“One weakness of the dolphin is its strong love for humans. So when they kill, they are killing for those they have learned to love.”
PRELUDE
Everything in the AIM Facility in Oregon shone with the same deep shine, from the back of the killer whale to the boots of the sentry who checked Admiral Hope’s pass. Commander Harper had returned like a whirlwind from his grilling at the Pentagon, and the scientists and enlisted men had listened, totally bemused, to the endless stream of orders which had come from their usually preoccupied and easy-going CO. He needed more money. And if he was to get it he must impress the Navy. And if he was to impress the Navy then he must first impress Admiral Hope. And Admiral Hope had given fair warning that he wasn’t a man to be easily impressed.
For the first time in two years the sergeant’s bellow had echoed above the regular thump of marching feet over the placid waters of the anchorage. Teams of men had repainted the old hulks down to water-line, had gone through the laboratories disturbing dust and notes with equal ferocity, cleaning computers, shining video equipment. Professors seconded from half a dozen universities began saluting everything that moved. White lines appeared on the ground, stars and stripes in the air – after the flagpole had been repainted. For thirteen days there was bedlam; and on the fourteenth, absolute quiet.
“Well,” said Admiral Hope, as Harper escorted him up the white steps to the main Administration Building, “you run a tight ship, Commander, I’ll say that for you.”
The sentry at the door crashed to attention. The commander’s hand rose fractionally ahead of the admiral’s to return the rigid salute.
The Alternative Intelligences Marine Facility was centred on the bay of the anchorage. The long arms of land almost met a thousand yards out from the mainland, and, as they swept back from the sea, they gained stature until they met in a cliff almost two hundred feet high looking out over the Pacific. The back wall of the main Administration Building extended this cliff by another fifty feet, before sloping into a red roof. On either side of the Administration Building were the laboratories. In front of the Administration Building was the parade ground, with the sleeping quarters, the recreation hall, the Facility’s gymnasium, cinema and shops arranged around it. It was not a big base, but in the mid-morning sunshine it looked functional and impressive.
The admiral saw it all, from the incredibly tidy laboratories to the surprisingly clean mess hall. They did not talk business until they were settled in Harper’s office after the inspection and the formal lunch were over.
“Now,” said the admiral mildly, “I’ve seen what the place looks like. Now you have to show me precisely what it does that is so all-fired important.”
Commander Harper’s hand went to sweep back his hair before he remembered he had had it cut short. He adjusted his tie instead.
“We have seven of the leading members of the genus Delphinidae here, sir,” he began. “First there is the common dolphin, measuring eight to ten feet; second, the bottlenosed dolphin, slightly larger at nine to twelve feet average; third, the white beluga, ten to twelve feet; the narwhal, twelve to eighteen feet, which has only one tooth, six feet long like a unicorn’s horn; next we have the pilot whale, eighteen to twenty-two feet; the bottle-nosed whale which is like a huge bottlenosed dolphin measuring up to thirty-six feet; and lastly, the star of our show, the killer whale or grampus.”
Admiral Hope’s hand slammed on to the top of his desk with a report like a pistol. “For the love of God, man, get to the point.” Three weeks earlier, Hope’s doctor had told him that if he didn’t stop smoking immediately, he would die. The admiral had smoked nothing since, and it was reducing his normally threadbare temper to tatters.
Commander Harper hesitated, staring at the admiral’s fat, belligerent form. “You will be aware, sir, that dolphins are mammals, that is that they have a constant temperature generated by body heat and not governed by the temperature of their surroundings; they have been, and to a microscopic extent still are, covered with fur; and they give birth to, and suckle their young. They were once land-dwelling animals, and their frame is that of a land-dweller re-adapted to marine life. And, of course, they breathe air.” The commander’s light blue eyes met the admiral’s red ones. The pause never really became a silence.
“Even so,” Harper went on hurriedly, “they are able to empty their lungs of more than eighty per cent of their air in less than a second, and refill them again almost as quickly; when they dive, the oxygen supply to all parts of the body except the heart and brain is cut off, a fact which allows lengths of dive to vary from fifteen minutes in the smaller species, to an hour and fifteen minutes in the larger. Their muscles are able to store their own supplies of oxygen, which means that no matter how deep they dive, or how fast they surface, they never get the bends.”
“When in hell’s name are you going to come to the point?” asked Admiral Hope.
Commander Harper cleared his throat and proceeded. “Sonar. The sonar of the dolphin family is incredibly advanced. In an element where clear sight is denied it, the dolphin literally sees with its ears. Not only can it detect objects by this method, but also, by moving its head slightly from side to side thus using both ears, it can judge size and distance precisely as we do with our eyes. At rest, a dolphin will emit a series of low clicks every fifteen seconds or so. These reflect back off objects and are picked up by the dolphin’s jaw and ears. If it gets an interesting reading, it raises the pitch of the noises until a precise and uncluttered picture of the object appears, together with precise measurements of its size and distance.”
Admiral Hope looked at him with narrowed eyes.
Harper wondered if he should be using slides to keep the admiral’s interest. He cleared his throat again. “Intelligence. With the possible exception of Man, the family Delphinidae is the most intelligent species on earth. In consequence they are easy to train. Also, they enjoy play for its own sake, and the element of fun can be introduced into training so that they literally enjoy what they are being trained to do. Furthermore, there seems to be a degree of reasoning ability. The dolphin clearly has the ability to improvise outside the set parameters of its training; to remember orders and extend them outside the training scenarios; in short, to think for itself.”
There was silence as the admiral digested this.
“A clear example of this in the case of the common dolphin, in its natural environment, is the number of thoroughly documented cases of dolphins saving drowning men by supporting them in the water. Now this is how the dolphin has learned to help other dolphins in its family group, and when it helps the swimmer, it is simply applying this knowledge outside normal parameters. There is very little likelihood that they confuse the swimmer with another dolphin. No, they are being literally thoughtful.”
Admiral Hope drummed his fingers. “I understood I was here to evaluate the killer whale. Not to hear about the philanthropic activities of dolphins.”