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Navy May Use Mine-Detecting Dolphins In the Straight of Hormuz
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.
With lasers of course...
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!
Given how intelligent dolphins are, and how much technology and money it would take to replicate the functions and capabilities of a living creature, I don't think your view plays out. You talk about how expensive it would be to train dolphins, but it would be many more times expensive to use hardware instead.
... and thanks for all the oil !
Dolphins are a recognised Cute Animal. People like them. People love them. People have made a TV series around one. Some people practically worship them. If a dolphin is killed in action, the public outcry is unpredictable. Maybe it'll be nothing at all, maybe it'll be worse than a human casualty - after all, people expect those. KIA dolphins are unprecidented, there is no telling how it will go PR-wise. Other than that PETA is probably already writing their first letter of complaint, of course.
I can just imagine the brouhaha that PETA will kick up over this.
If we go to war with Iran, I feel like PETA will not find a very receptive audience to said brouhaha.
Besides, Dolphins are cooler than nukes. They have sex for fun and are the second most intelligent creatures on the planet.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
You know, for the Americans to but the hell out of other countries business and look at their own issues instead.
Stop waging war on the peoples of this planet (those that have oil at least) and you might find your place in the world moves up from itinerant and hated troublemaker to respected citizen.
Hard I know aftrer so many decades of poking your nose it's not welcome... but hell, give it a try.
Except in this case the personnel are dolphins.
Should be simple enough to rig one in ten of your mines with an acoustic package that responds to the presence of a Dolphin sonar frequency fingerprint by detonating. Need to be careful that it doesn't respond to a ship playing back Dolphin frequencies on its active sonar.
From what I understand about the sensitivity of marine mammals to extreme Sonar sound pressure - you wouldn't even need it to detonate - just let out a couple of sonic farts at 140db should deafen the Dolphins permanently. I'm sure the Navy has a nice retirement program for deaf Dolphins. Not like the US Navy could complain - no worse than they do during a typical navel exercise with the active sonar on their submarines and ships.
Always more marine mammals in the sea.
No matter how many dolphin friendly tuna have been trained, dolphins still die by the hundred each year in monofilament drift nets.
If we really want to save the dolphins, we need to give up eating tuna. Despite all the whining from PETA on that subject, there has been minimal effect. The death of brave dolphin fighters in protecting the god-given right to cheap oil will have a similar effect.
Nothing.
Poor bloody dolphins.
They have sex for fun
They also force their ladies to have sexy times through which is rape! The more you know! ===*
second most intelligent creatures on the planet.
“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
are the second most intelligent creatures on the planet.
Makes me wonder why they allow a third rate species push them around.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
"This is what I say to Iran. Let me be absolutely clear. If you close the Strait of Hormuz you are making the choice to put innocent dolphins in harms way. The American people will hold YOU responsible for their deaths. Think carefully."
Telling us to fuck off and die isn't very endearing. Despite what you think some of us are actually knowledgeable about geography. Also the actions of our government have since long ago not been a representation of the will of our people. Though anyone who knows anything about our government would realize that putting mines in the way of our boats or attacking them is a sure fire way to end up with your country invaded. Ever stop to think that both sides want this war? That is probably really what is going on.
Given how intelligent dolphins are, and how much technology and money it would take to replicate the functions and capabilities of a living creature, I don't think your view plays out. You talk about how expensive it would be to train dolphins, but it would be many more times expensive to use hardware instead.
I work at a university, and this is yet another case where the world should look to academia for the solution.
You need a cheap yet intelligent work force that's willing to work long hours and isn't overly picky about working conditions? That's easy - that's what grad students are for. They're easily replaceable too!
#DeleteChrome
I can't say that I oppose all USA military operations: I actually think that what they did (and led other nations to do) in Libya was pretty great. I bet we're going to see a lot more problems in that area (Be it terrorism, hanging on the edge of another civil war or just another dictator grabbing the power after a while) but it was still a joint operation by the international community, intended to help people who wanted to overthrow a dictator.
That said... It's hard to deny that a lot of the problems in the area are also more or less directly caused by the USA. It's a very militaristic nation, with a very large and loud minority(?) of islamophobes and every few years it demonstrates that it still reserves itself the right to attack any nation there for whatever reason it wants to, whether or not they have the support of the international community and whether or not those reasons even make sense.
Whenever any dictator faces an uprising or any terrorist organization faces opposition from the locals, the first thing they say "Those are just agents of USA messing around" and the problem is... that doesn't sound as far-fetched as it should. USA foreign policy has been very effective in painting the nation as an evil empire against which the Arabs should unite. I'm not saying that there wouldn't be terrorist nutjobs if not for USA but I am saying that they have more support and credibility due to actions by USA. As far as I'm aware, the main platform of Ahmadinejad is rallying against USA: He gains support during conflicts like these and loses it when people direct their attention to internal affairs.
Monkeys are as smart as dolphins. Why doesnt someone teach them to use guns? then we could get people out of harms way. What you would do is first fo all locate your enemy with reconnaisance planes then drop some bananas over them and unleash the monkeys. They would naturally move towards the bannanas. It would probably be hard to teach a monkey to target troops of a particular country, so when they were sent in the friendly troops would have to get out of the way.
I once saw a tv show where they talked about these military dolphins. I can't recall what the program was, but the outcome wasn't that great. They basically said the dolphins, being such intelligent creatures, sometimes actually lied for the fun of it. Unlike the dogs who simply do what they're told, the dolphins actually played with the rules and would say no mine was there even if they knew they were spotted as being lying.
Maybe the psychological side of the training has evolved since then, or maybe it was just a campaign of misinformation, but if it's actually true, doesn't sound too great for this theory...
No offense, but those dolphins probably cost millions to raise and train
You really don't understand how defense contracting works, do you? They cost millions to raise and train, and the government is billed for billions in "biological mine locator units (BMLU's)".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
[...] during a typical navel exercise [...]
you made my day here
Given how intelligent dolphins are, and how much technology and money it would take to replicate the functions and capabilities of a living creature, I don't think your view plays out. You talk about how expensive it would be to train dolphins, but it would be many more times expensive to use hardware instead.
We could use members of PETA.
They're all vegans and therefore are skinnier than shit and wouldn't have any sonar profile.
They're all super angry so if we told them that the Iranians were using mines to kill cute cuddly something or anothers, they'd be out there with sledge hammers.
And then if we provided "proof" that the Iranians used dead (by clubbing) baby seals, well that'd be the end of that!
Imagine an army of waifs storming into Iran.
OK fine, I'm old as dirt.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It's a body of water, not an adjective indicating co-linearity.
Grad Students are just the larval form of Interns in the business world.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
. Also the actions of our government have since long ago not been a representation of the will of our people.
what are you going to do about that ?
Read radical news here
Sorry, but this is something that affects America and thus America has a right to respond. If nothing else, America has an economic interest in the oil continuing to flow.
Further, they wouldn't be the only one. If Iran closed the strait they would have to invade Oman's waters to do so (as part of it is in there) and thus would defacto declare war on Oman. Then of course there's the fact that UNCLOS provides that it isn't legal to close down the strait just because you want to. Iran would be violating international law.
So while the US would probably have the biggest response, on account of having the largest military and the most near by, they wouldn't be the only ones. The EU would join in, as would other Middle Eastern nations, who have not only an economic interest, but an interest in not letting Iran violate the sovereignty of another nation in that region (remembering that Iran is Persian, not Arab and there's little love lost between those two).
So sorry if you don't like it, but the US is in the right here. Free transit of the ocean is an international right, and the strait is part of that. Iran doesn't get to close it down just because their feelings are hurt, and the US would be legally in the right to respond.
The Obama administration has reportedly warned Iran that closing the Straight would provoke an American response.
I love how it's only the US that can be 'provoked'.
Remember, folks, Iran's apparently nuclear weapon program, while not illegal in any sense, 'provokes' the US. Countries have a perfect right to develop nukes if they want, and cut off inspections that they are only working towards nuclear power, and all it does is get them kicked out of the nuclear weapon's treaty, which means many countries won't sell uranium to them. That's it. It doesn't give anyone the right to attack them, or be 'provoked' into a war with them.
I think people have somehow gotten confused since the Iraq war and think developing nukes are 'illegal', but Iraq signed a surrender in war saying they wouldn't develop nukes, so, if they actually had been doing so, it would be a violation of the surrender and the war would be back on. Iran is not anywhere near the same situation.
However, threatening to bomb Iran in violation of international law is illegal. I don't mean actually bombing Iran, although that's also illegal...just threatening to attack countries over internal matters is actually illegal. As is planning to do so. It's a crime against peace. Somehow, that doesn't count as 'provoking'.
But, if Iran does what is mostly within international law, closing of its own waterways to transit passage of countries threatening it, that is also 'provoking'. Countries are supposed to allow passage of ships through their waters as long as they don't stop, but they can stop that when, for example, people keep threatening to attack them. (And they can certainly keep out warships of countries that keep threatening them!)
To summarize: Iran doing things we don't like that are possibly falling short of their treaty obligations, but are not in any way 'illegal', that's 'provoking' us. The US committing the outright war crime of planning and threatening to bomb them to change their internal behavior, why, it's crazy to think Iran might not like that.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
140 dB underwater is actually pretty quiet. Sound levels underwater are based on a reference of 1 Pascal at 1 meter. Sound levels in the air were arbitrarily referenced to 20 Pascal at 1 meter to better align it with the sensitivity of the human ear. Water also has a much higher impedance than air. Consequently, to convert underwater dB to to air dB, you have to subtract 62. 140 dB underwater is equivalent to just 78 dB in air. And even whales are able to pump out 180-190 dB.
Unfortunately, PETA and some environmental groups have either failed to understand this or deliberately abused misunderstanding of it to generate hysteria among the public about the effects of underwater sonar and ship traffic on wildlife.
No, I think Iran has rights to the part of the passage way that lies within their waters and part of it does (it is setup as two lanes.) Actually, the GPS lanes could be moved to Oman's waters and not touch Iranian waters; unless the treaty requires the 1 lane always be theirs or that the dividing line is defined as between the two lanes... I don't know but I wouldn't think so. Then Iran would be stuck as the traffic would move around them. It would not be within their rights to mess with the water outside their jurisdiction. I rarely hear of a treaty that doesn't have some sort of a national security clause of some sort (even without one its an excuse that often trumps any previous laws.)
That being said, I'm not a biased Iranian Apologist; I have no connection to them, I am a white atheist and I hate all theocracies. Iran is not being handled properly and a huge portion of its people are not close to as backwards as their leadership who cares about ideology over its own people; but they get punished by the madness inside and outside their nation. BTW, here is a talk on game theory: http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2009/04/28/predicting-the-future-of-iran-using-game-theory-bruce-bueno-de-mesquita-on-tedcom/
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Because clearing mines is easy. Finding mines is very difficult. The use of mammals for mine counter-measures is actually not particularly popular with "green" environmentalist minded set of society.
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.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.