Dolphin Captivity Essay

When the word dolphin comes to mind what do you think of? Seaworld? Flipper? or what about tuna? What most people don’t think about is Dolphins helping the United States Navy. Since 1950’s dolphins have been trained in captivity to assist the navy with important missions. The Navy also has done research with dolphins to help better understand the way this animal lives in its environment and to see how to protect it. This program is called Navy Marine Mammal Program(NMMP).This program turns heads from animal activist arguing against marine animals being held in captivity no matter the circumstances. Ric O’Barry a former dolphin trainer now a famous dolphin activist, leads a program called “The Dolphin Project” to help educate the public about the harmful
The difference in point of view is where these groups run into problems with each other. Is the Untied States Navy harming dolphins by keeping and training them in captivity? Dolphins are known for being one of the most intelligent mammals in the world. The U.S. Navy started studying these mammals back in 1950s. The Navy thought that they could improve their vessels by studying the hydrodynamics of the dolphins in water. After studying the mammal they begin to find other qualities that would be useful in the Navy. Dolphins have an amazing trait called echolocation. This allows the dolphins to be able to catch prey not by site but by vibrations that become reflected off of the prey and back to the dolphin. The United States Navy began training dolphins to find sea mines by using echolocation (see figure A). Sea mines are hard to find in murky water and are at the bottom of the ocean making it hard for humans to see the mine. Not only can dolphins locate the sea mines but unlike humans dolphins can