Researchers Stuck Cameras on U.S. Navy Dolphins, and the Footage Is Bizarre

In case you didn’t know, the U.S. Navy has militarized sea mammals that assist establish undersea mines, defend towards enemy swimmers, and protect about a quarter of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. Recently, a crew of researchers outfitted among the Navy’s dolphins with cameras and captured some outstanding footage of the cetaceans searching and feeding.

Though the dolphins are a part of the Navy, they’re allowed to do open-water swimming. The current mission witnessed six bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) catching over 200 fishes and sea snakes in a seawater pool and in San Diego Bay off the coast of California. The crew’s analysis detailing the dolphin’s searching and consuming strategies is published in PLOS One.

Cameras connected to the dolphins with harnesses recorded video and audio over a six-month interval. The audio was essential as a result of the researchers wished to know extra about how the dolphins communicated throughout their sojourns.

If you’re used to seeing dolphins from some other angle, the footage is slightly startling. Some cameras have been positioned on the animals’ backs, giving a view of their blowhole, however others have been on the animals’ sides, to greatest present their eyes and jaws.

“Fish continued escape swimming even as they entered the dolphins’ mouth, yet the dolphin appeared to suck the fish right down,” the researchers wrote. They ascribed that course of to a technique of feeding that toothed whales and different marine mammals use, in which the predator expands its throat to actually suck down prey.

The dolphins consumed an array of creatures: bass, croakers, halibut, pipefish, and smelt amongst them. The open-water dolphins additionally caught sea snakes, jerking their heads to assist the serpents down their gullets. The analysis crew proposes placing related cameras on wild dolphins, to see whether or not their searching and consuming habits is likely to be any totally different.

American naval use of dolphins stretches again to the Nineteen Sixties, according to PBS. Dolphins have been utilized by the Navy in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. The program has been the topic of criticism, perhaps most notably by Ric O’Barry, a dolphin coach who labored within the Navy’s dolphin program and launched two of this system’s dolphins in 1996. Those two dolphins have been later recaptured.

Other international locations even have energetic army dolphin packages. In April, Russia deployed army dolphins to defend one in every of its Black Sea bases. 

“They can swim away if they choose, and over the years a few have,” states the Naval Undersea Museum website. “But almost all stay.”