Among the participants in operations in Iraq are dolphins! Here’s an extended article from Smithsonian Magazine: Uncle Sam’s Dolphins:

In March (2003), Kahili, along with eight other dolphins that are a part of the U.S. Navy’s Special Clearance Team One, became the first marine mammals to take part in mine-clearing operations in an active combat situation. Together with Navy SEALS, Marine Corps reconnaissance swimmers, explosive ordnance disposal divers and unmanned undersea vehicles, they helped disarm more than 100 antiship mines and underwater booby traps planted in Umm Qasr’s port by Saddam Hussein’s forces.

The training facility is out at Point Loma — at SPAWAR:

Today, the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center San Diego spends up to $14 million a year to operate, including training its 75 dolphins and 25 sea lions. The Navy says it hasn’t captured wild dolphins since 1999, when it began a captive dolphin breeding program.

Here’s the official page on mine hunting for SPAWAR. And I love the url for that page as well: SAN DIEGO > TECHNOLOGY > MAMMALS. In some sense, we’re all just technology, right?

the U.S. Navy has found that the biological sonar of dolphins, called echolocation, makes them uniquely effective at locating sea mines so they can be avoided or removed. Other marine mammals like the California sea lion also have demonstrated the ability to mark and retrieve objects for the Navy in the ocean.

It’s rather hopeful to see that they do seem to place the health of the animals at highest priority. I’m sure animal activists hate this program, but it seems a reasonable use of the remarkable skills of these animals.