Navy getting rid of mine seeking dolphins

>https://www.rand.org/blog/2022/07/why-it-makes-sense-to-keep-mine-hunting-dolphins-on.html
> In the Navy's budget request for the coming fiscal year, funding for the dolphin team has been slashed by $6.6 million—to less than $1 million (PDF).
> To report the presence of mines to their human handlers, the dolphins are trained to tap paddles attached to a boat or dock, then are given devices to mark the mines' locations, enabling elimination of the threat.
> During exercises, dolphins almost always locate every mine assigned to them, in addition to previously undiscovered mines from World War II.
>Thanks to healthy diets, medical care and protection from predators, the dolphins frequently live decades beyond what they would in the wild.
>Eliminating the dolphin mine-hunting program would save the Navy $7 million annually. In contrast, the Navy has spent $131 million over the last three years to acquire 10 of the newest uncrewed undersea vehicles that would replace the dolphins—and that does not include operational costs.
>Rather than one system being viewed as a replacement for the other, the two can work together: The vehicles can sweep wider areas at lower levels of fidelity, and dolphins can provide focused capabilities in specific environments or when higher accuracy is needed

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  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    The whole project was a result of Lilly's K-hole induced fever dream. But we did get ECCO the Dolphin out of it, eventually

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Did we? Ecco is about aliens, not humans

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly#Earth_Coincidence_Control_Office_(E.C.C.O.)

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Incorrect - ECCO was inspired by a guy who did a lot of drugs and worked with NASA to hire a young woman to be a dolphin's cohabitating girlfriend and try to teach it to speak. That sounds like a joke but it isn't, homegirl jerked off a dolphin.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          >you just know

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    this is worth a watch lol

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Interesting, shame their budget is being cut

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    How would America fights Russian Giant Squids then?

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    🙁

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    It's been a long stated aim to remove "the man and the mammal" from mine clearance work. No divers and no flipper, just UUVs.

  7. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    The experience learned through the program will be worth its cost. It could have never had resulted in anything that wasnt a gimmick.

  8. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I'm for it if it's been superseded by a better process, otherwise I'm not.

  9. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    What do dolphins taste like bros?

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Wdym? Like their wieners? Their cum?

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        He's Japanese.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      tuna

  10. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    So what do we do with our mine-seeking dolphins now? Do we just put them in theme parks or something?

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      I can make a female one my dolphin wife.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >tfw no minesweeper dolphin gf with a Navy pension to support my NEET lifestyle

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      I don’t know why, but I thought the mineseeking dolphin in the Johnny Mnemonic short story was a human cyborg’d into a cetacean shell. It was way creepier that he was sort of abandoned to a Seaworld.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >go from cool minesweeping dolphin in the navy to doing tricks in a zoo or theme park
      I wonder if dolphins are intelligent enough to feel depressed.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        They 110% are. Not necessarily because of going from an operator to a water zoo exhibit, but in terms of being bored and frustrated living in a bathtub with nothing to do dolphins and killer whales routinely McFricking kill themselves after failing to adapt to the SeaWorld life

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          https://i.imgur.com/5grFZoB.png

          Incorrect - ECCO was inspired by a guy who did a lot of drugs and worked with NASA to hire a young woman to be a dolphin's cohabitating girlfriend and try to teach it to speak. That sounds like a joke but it isn't, homegirl jerked off a dolphin.

          When this girl left the program the dolphin literally committed suicide by intentionally drowning. So, yes, they can feel depression, I think it's safe to say.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >Without funding, the fate of the dolphins was in question. “I couldn’t keep Peter,” says Lovatt, wistfully. “If he’d been a cat or a dog, then maybe. But not a dolphin.” Lovatt’s new job soon became the decommissioning of the lab and she prepared to ship the dolphins away to Lilly’s other lab, in a disused bank building in Miami. It was a far cry from the relative freedom and comfortable surroundings of Dolphin House.

            >At the Miami lab, held captive in smaller tanks with little or no sunlight, Peter quickly deteriorated, and after a few weeks Lovatt received news.

            >"I got that phone call from John Lilly,” she recalls. “John called me himself to tell me. He said Peter had committed suicide.”

            >Ric O’Barry corroborates the use of this word. “Dolphins are not automatic air-breathers like we are,” he explains. “Every breath is a conscious effort. If life becomes too unbearable, the dolphins just take a breath and they sink to the bottom. They don’t take the next breath.” Andy Williamson puts Peter’s death down to a broken heart, brought on by a separation from Lovatt that he didn’t understand. “Margaret could rationalise it, but when she left, could Peter? Here’s the love of his life gone.”

            Damn

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              humans are unironically the biggest Black folk in the world. Excluding the willful and deliberate extermination of species and instituionalised torture we conduct on livestock everyday, 54 turtle species alone have been driven into extinction by rats we brought mistakenly to other parts of the world

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous
      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        they're considered to be on par with humans with regards to emotional intelligence or something

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          They pass the mirror test, have the traits of vanity and sadism, and will rape people if given half the chance.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Orcas also have religion and group up to ritualisticly sacrifice sharks.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >I wonder if dolphins are intelligent enough to feel depressed.
        Almost any animal in captivity feels depressed if its environment is constrained and unnatural. You've never seen a small mammal in a zoo pulling its fur out and rocking back and forth? Dolphins even more so as they are extremely social and require a large living space.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      turn them into tuna of course

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >So what do we do with our mine-seeking dolphins now?
      Put them down. They're too intelligent for their own good anyways.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      There's a baluga whale in Norway they call Hvaldimir that hangs around boats and people standing around the docks and stuff in a certain bay and if people drop their cellphone or other objects in the water he brings them back to them. It's believed he is a released/escaped Russian military trained whale. It may be that they can fend for themselves if released, but this one seems to insist on being dependent on humans, so they'll probably have to be cared for forever.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Intelligent animals like these could probably adapt but they'd need to have learnt the human stuff after the whale stuff
        I know for example here in Sweden we taught wild literal who crows to pick up cigs in exchange for food

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Makes sense, crows are plenty smart you could probably teach one to deposit trash in a specially marked tube with a feed dispenser in about 10 minutes with a skinner box

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Not only that, but crows can teach other crows and conspire. You might only need to teach a few and as soon as other crows see them picking up the butts and getting rewarded they'll learn that and try it for themselves.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >So what do we do with our mine-seeking dolphins now? Do we just put them in theme parks or something?
      Unrionically kill them. Save them from the horror of being put into zoos, tanks or being peddled for use by tortureworld. Only let them go if they can safety be allowed into the wild or there is a sanctuary where they can be with their own kind is large, open areas.

  11. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    navy being the big gay, as usual

  12. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I want to work with dolphins. Do you know what kind of MOS I have to join to become a marine corps biologist?

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      You'd probably have better luck studying to become a regular marine biologist and then landing some kind of civilian consulting gig, that way you won't get dishonorably discharged when you inevitably end up fricking one of the dolphins

  13. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    They should give the dolphins that will basically be out of the job due to this some sort of pension so they can live a decent life.

    I'm serious. Dolphin intelligence is a bit frightening, I'd go so far as to say they're about as sentient and intelligent as a 3 year old human child. If they just dump these dolphins into some aquarium show it would be cruel. On the other hand, dolphins are capable of teaching each other behaviors and even crude tool use so if they were released to an aquarium or even into the wild we could very well see within 5-6 dolphin generations mine clearing behaviors being ingrained and replicated in mass.

  14. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Looks like the dolphins will need to seek jobs in the porn industry

  15. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Kinda moronic.

    For comparison, the army spends 3.2 MILLION dollars to RENT tents for 3-4 months every single year in order to house soldiers to train West Point Cadets.

    I guarantee the Navy also has some completely wasteful items on the budget they could cut instead of this

  16. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Dolphins and whales are very advanced creatures

  17. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >evolve high intelligence
    >only have flippers

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Without a hint of irony, probably the only reason sea mammals don't have technology is a combination of not having hands and it not being possible to make fire in water. For Octopi it's a combination of not being able to make fire and only living for about 4 or 5 years.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        There's no doubt in my mind octopi would have kicked the shit out of us if they figured out terrestrial life.

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