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Navy May Use Mine-Detecting Dolphins In the Straight of Hormuz

Posted by Soulskill on from the more-effective-than-mutated-sea-bass dept.

New submitter cervesaebraciator writes "The Atlantic Wire reports that the Navy has a tested solution to the possible mining of the Strait of Hormuz. The Navy has 80 dolphins in San Diego Bay trained to use their own sonar to detect mines. When they find the mines, the dolphins drop an acoustic transponder nearby, so that human divers might return to defuse it. Retired Adm. Tim Keating cannot say, however, whether the dolphins will be used in the Straight." The Obama administration has reportedly warned Iran that closing the Strait would provoke an American response.

4 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. straight straits by mrvan · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081210140645AADMNkG

    Whats the difference between Straight and Strait?
    Straight, as in a line without a waver or curve.
    Strait: "A strait is a narrow, navigable channel of water that connects two larger navigable bodies of water. "

    And for the love of foreigners, if you guys do something about your spelling issues, please remove unsounded letters (like the "gh" in straight"), don't add any more of them. That's just cheating at scrabble!

    1. Re:straight straits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's a legacy of English being the bastard love child of all the languages that passed through western Europe. Strait and Straight have different etymologies, so they've inherited the spellings that evolved from their respective parent languages. Strait comes from the Old French "estreit", whereas straight comes from Anglo-Saxon "streccan". Give it another few hundred years and they'll standardise on something spelt similar to both (my guess would be "strate")

  2. Re:Sharks instead? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sharks do have Electroreception though, which would be a really cool sense to be able to harness if sharks were trainable.

  3. c'mon "editors" by fyngyrz · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's "strait of Hormuz", not "straight of Hormuz"

    Y'know, not to suggest anything radical or anything, but maybe slashdot should pursue the idea of hiring an editor who can, you know... edit.

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