Talk:United States Navy Marine Mammal Program

confirmed kills

I'm deleting the claims of 42 kills during the vietnam war, unless someone can give some actual hard evidence to back it up 70.70.136.240 22:12, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Initial Comments

I really think this page should have some mention about the US Navy's rejections of the 'dart gun dolphins' story. The navy claims not to even have a dolphin training facility in the gulf region, the only one being in San Diego. The dolphins that were lost during Katrina were apparently from amusment parks.

However a picture of a dolphin from the Austin Powers movie would look fantastic. - (Unsigned)

I clarified the "dart guns" bit a little, and added some pics I took in San Diego. I think we can assume that any Austin Powers pics would be copyrighted, unfortunately. - Johantheghost 14:34, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Upon further research, I decided that the comments about "This highly secretive experiment" are a little unjustified. After I found the NMMP's web site, that is! I've now expanded the article considerably, while trying to keep NPOV. — Johantheghost 00:43, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, from what I can tell from previous reviews and the nomination for featured article, this one has come a long way indeed. Having sat in on a briefing and tour of the facility in San Diego back in 2002, there's nothing that I can remember from the information I heard that isn't already on this page. What piqued my interest the most was the part on the dolphins being used as active agressors. When someone in my tour group asked that very question, the response he got from one of the trainers was "that's classified." Just my little input. --- Maverick 07:30, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Cetacean Intelligence Mission

This article was originally titled Cetacean Intelligence Mission, the purported name of the NMMP. I renamed the article when I found the program's web site, and its official name.

Now I've relegated the original Cetacean Intelligence Mission title to a small snippet at the bottom of the article. The reason for this is that I can't find any mention of this title on the web that doesn't seem to originate from Leo Sheridan, who is described by Museum of Hoaxes as "The Observer's resident crackpot-on-call". I can't justify citing this as an alternative name for the program on one person's say-so, specially in the face of the NMMP's own highly-informative website. Sheridan also makes factual errors such as saying that the Navy launched the NMMP in 1989 with the approval of President George Bush — as opposed to 1960. — Johantheghost 20:33, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

AMMPA Accreditation

Just to explain the AMMPA situation, for the record (since I have a source — a private email — that I don't think I can quote in the article).

I have been trying to establish exactly what standard of animal care in the NMMP is guaranteed by external oversight. The front page of the NMMP's website features the AMMPA logo with the text:

"The Navy's Marine Mammal Program is an accredited member of the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums, an international organization committed to the care and conservation of marine mammals. Accreditation by the Alliance means this facility meets or exceeds all the standards of excellence for marine mammal care, husbandry, conservation and education."

This seems like a pretty good example of external oversight, and implies standards based on what you would expect from an animal park. So, I would expect AMMPA accreditation to exclude invasive experimentation, for example. However, I emailed AMMPA to ask them about this, and they said that their accreditation of NMMP was based purely on NMMP being accredited by AAALAC. Since AAALAC sets standards for the care of lab animals, this is a lot less impressive — specifically, it would not rule out invasive experimentation, as far as I can see (the AAALAC web site pretty well dodges away from explaining what their accreditation actually means, which is a huge cop-out as far as I can see; but the program description that I refer to in the article seems to cover it).

Now, the Navy does make clear, on their Marine Mammal Health Care page, that:

"The NMMP is accredited by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International (AAALAC). AAALAC is a nonprofit non-regulatory organization that promotes high standards of animal care and use, improves laboratory animal well-being, and enhances life sciences research through accreditation."

So I don't think that the Navy is being misleading here, or I would have made a bigger issue of it. I also have absolutely no reason to believe that the Navy is doing any kind of invasive experimentation on its animals. I am disappointed that AMMPA, which is supposed to be about parks and aquariums, accepts AAALAC accreditation, when according to its own website

AMMPA "... is an international association representing marine life parks, aquariums, zoos, research facilities, and professional organizations dedicated to the highest standards of care for marine mammals ..."

and further

"Only those aquariums, zoos, oceanariums, research institutions, and marine life parks that aspire to the Alliance's high ideals will be accepted as members of the association."

But that's another story. AMMPA may be doing / have done additional examination of NMMP, but the email I got from them (which was pretty brief) implied not.

So, I think that the above is way too long-winded to put in the article, which I think captures the essentials in the "Welfare" section. But that's the background for anyone who's interested.

— Johantheghost 11:29, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

A relevant point for animal welfare is that the NMMP uses an IACUC to approve protocols for care and research, and the IACUC has membership from outside the NMMP. I've added a couple of sentences to reflect this. -- Wesley R. Elsberry 10:59 22 March 2006 (PDT)

That's very useful info, thanks. Do you have a reference for that that we could cite? — Johan the Ghost _seance 18:46, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Deletion of irrelevant material

I deleted this text (following)from the "Attack Missions" section as I felt it was irrelevant - it felt like justification for a POV rather than providing information about the US NMMP. (MarkG 20 Dec 2005).

"The U.S. Navy has an arsenal of more conventional weapons which can be used to attack enemy ships in harbor, such as the Mark 48 torpedo, the Mark 67 submarine-launched mobile mine, and the Mark 60 Captor mine. A single attack submarine could deliver up to forty Mark 67 mines in one mission, each carrying a 230 kg warhead, at a distance up to 5–7 miles (8–10 km)."

I disagree (as presumably would those who contributed to the peer review, and the Featured Article Candidate processes); this is a valid rebuttal of the idea that it makes sense to strap a mine onto a dolphin and send it into an enemy harbour. If those other systems didn't exist, it might make sense, but they do. — Johantheghost 15:34, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

BTW, if you logged in, we could discuss this further. — Johantheghost 15:45, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I tend to agree with MarkG, for what it's worth. Leithp (talk) 15:39, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I have to disagree. This is a direct response to the text:

"There has been significant speculation that Navy dolphins are trained in attack missions, such as direct attacks against swimmers in the water or attaching limpet mines to enemy ships in harbor".

This point needs to be responded to, as many people seriously believe it, and there have been articles on this theme published in the mainstream media (notably the Observer). Someone who doesn't know about the relevant military hardware could easily think that a dolphin with a limpet mine on its back makes sense, and would be too attractive for the military to ignore. Some who does know about the capabilities of the Mark 67 submarine-launched mobile mine and the Mark 60 Captor mine might very well decide to form a different opinion, and I think they deserve the opportunity to do that. — Johantheghost 15:45, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

However, they might have one advantage over conventional naval weaponry: a human sonar operator would be unable to distinguish between a dolphin-bomb and a wild dolphin. Oktal (talk) 18:20, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Re-reading it, I remember that that paragraph used to have some text directly linking it to the main point, by saying that these weapons are more consistent/reliable etc. than dolphins; I think that made the paragraph feel more integrated, and less tacked-on. The text got removed during peer review — I think because it's kind of hard to justify, even though I think it can be justified on the basis of being obvious (forty self-guided mines can outperform a couple of dolphins that a sub could carry). Maybe a way could be found to put that back in. How about:

"... could deliver up to forty Mark 67 mines in one mission, each carrying a 230 kg warhead, at a distance up to 5–7 miles (8–10 km). This is a significantly more powerful and more consistent capability than could be realised by the use of dolphins (presumably submarine-delivered to an enemy harbor)."

— Johantheghost 16:07, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Leithp (talk) 16:09, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry I edited what was discussed here. Didn't realize until afterwards that this part of the article was under discussion. I can see the possible relevance of the first part about the alternatives methods of attack, but the second sentence that has details about how many mines and the distance they can be dropped seems to be extraneous information that seems irrelevant to the main subject itself. Jwlee 19:24, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Saying that the Navy has mines isn't a big deal. But saying that a single sub can send 40 of them into a harbour from 5 miles away puts the "dolphin limpet mines" story into proper perspective, which is the point. — Johantheghost 19:27, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I've now made the change discussed above, to try to clarify why this para. is there. — Johantheghost 19:40, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

In the "In the Media" section it describes dophlins as "intelligent" animals. Is that an accurate word to use? I do not believe it fits the Wikitionary[1] defenition of intelligence. There also have been scientific studies to the contrary. [2]--Tmchk 22:26, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Thumb

Why the arbitrary thumb sizes? Since it's on the main page right now I don't want to change it... but, all of the pictures are big enough (300px wide+) to allow for user defaults to take precedence. gren グレン 16:32, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment. The answer is: simple ignorance on my part. (Didn't know about the user pref for thumbnails.) Feel free to break a piano over my head. I'll fix this... maybe tomorrow when we aren't under massive attack by hordes of vandals. — Johantheghost 16:36, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Haha, :) I didn't know for the first at least 6 months I was here... So, you're ahead of me if that's saying anything. gren グレン 03:51, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Cool... ;-) Anyhow, I've fixed it. Cheers for the heads-up! — Johantheghost 12:23, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

24 hours of hell

Well, the front page experience is over. Here are some stats which may be of interest. In 24 hours on the Wikipedia front page:

• we had 207 edits
  • 79 were vandalism
  • 86 were reverts / fixes
  • 26 (13%) were useful, constructive changes
  • 16 were non-vandalistic but detrimental changes

Of the vandalism edits:

• 68 (86%) were from IP-address users
• 11 were from 5 persistent vandals, who have mostly been blocked

I calculate that the article was in a vandalised state for over 48 minutes, which means that 3.3% of people visiting Wikipedia for the first time and clicking on "Today's featured article" would have been presented with a giant picture of a penis, or something similar.

I'm grateful to the many people who helped to police the page and keep it clean — for most of the time. What a shame that all that effort couldn't have been directed into cleaning up articles, starting wanted articles, fixing POV issues, etc. — Johantheghost 14:28, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Escaped Dolphins?

It's probably an Urban Myth, but here in the UK we heard that some of the dolphins trained to clear mines escaped when they were supposed to be clearing them, is there any truth to this and even if not, is it worth mentioning that it's an urban myth? - TomM

As far as I know, one dolphin went missing in the Gulf when clearing mines, but came back later. The media made a fuss about it, but I didn't really feel it was particularly significant. (BTW, I'm here in the UK too! Freezing in Inverness.) — Johantheghost 12:16, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Some fictional stories have dolphins escape. The fiction is the source of the partial myth. They can retire. Titles escape me at the moment. The dolphin community know the details better. 143.232.210.150 (talk) 23:55, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

featured article

hi all,

i am user in the hebrow wikipedia. in our wikipedia, this article is a featured article. can you put the star near the interwiki to hebrow?

thanks,

88.152.180.80 19:08, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

No, that's not how the star works. As far as I know there is no facility for putting stars next to interwiki links. I suggest you raise this idea at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). — Johan the Ghost _seance 20:28, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

that {{Link FA|he}} near the bottom does that. Rich Farmbrough 22:39 7 May 2006 (UTC).

Yes. I believe that feature was created after my previous comment. — Johan the Ghost _seance 22:59, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

NMMP Research

I'm a bit disturbed at the lack of notice in this article concerning the extent of basic scientific research that has been conducted under the auspices of the NMMP. There is an extensive record of scientific publications that were produced throughout the existence of the NMMP; the first external link given goes to a page with the introduction to the annotated bibliography. These were work products that were public knowledge, with many of them published even when the program itself was classified. To incorporate this properly will require more than cosmetic change to the page. -- Wesley R. Elsberry 11:06 22 March 2006 (PDT)

It's a very good point -- but couldn't we cover this quite well with a paragraph or two under "The program"? We don't need to go into it too exhuastively, I think, at least to begin with. — Johan the Ghost _seance 17:00, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that the significance of the record of research conducted under the auspices of the NMMP is not some module that can be mentioned in a couple of appended or inserted paragraphs. The existence and notability of the research undercuts the POV parts of this article that credulously accept paranoid fantasies about the NMMP as being still on the table. Those POV-pushing parts need to be removed, as well as noting the research. --Wesley R. Elsberry 05:11, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Agree completely with W. R. Elsberry. At minimum, at least cite (provide the link to) the Annotated bibliography of publications from the U.S. Navy's Marine Mammal Program. (TD 627, Revision D). San Diego, CA: Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, San Diego.

http://www.spawar.navy.mil/sti/publications/pubs/td/627/ This could go in the text or in the references. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.88.5.219 (talk) 07:33, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Dolphin Doctor

The canonical source for Dr. Ridgway's book is his web site, Dolphin Doctor. I was a doctoral student of Ridgway's, and I am the technical contact for the domain. --Wesley R. Elsberry 00:19, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Attack section...does not make sense

Sentences do not flow, disjointed and make little sense. Also, the section only has one citation, regarding the line "The navy claims that since dolphins cannot discern the difference between enemy...appropriate response". The rest is uncited and presents unrelated arguements with original research, eg: the attack sub line. Also... "There has been significant speculation that Navy dolphins are trained in attack missions, such as direct attacks against swimmers in the water or attaching limpet mines to enemy ships in harbor. This is also a popular theme in fiction. The “Swimmer Nullification” program is a major thorn in the Navy’s side. But, ex-employees of the dolphin program have explained in detail how the technology works(what technology, "Swimmer Nullification"?). After the war, the Navy developed a “silencer” system so that the sensitive hearing of the dolphins would not be affected if 45 cal. slugs and shotgun shells were used in the nosecones. (shot from dolphins, or shot at dolphin?) All three options are now available for dolphin use against swimmers depending on the needs of any secret operation.(?) Other benign devices are also available and are generally shown to the public in sanitized presentations.(such as?)"

anyone got any idea what that means? if so, any citations? Iciac 06:39, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I removed this section. I think, if it gets put back in, we should include a link to aluminum foil hats protecting from government mind control rays. That's a pretty pressing concern, you know.

I totally acknowledge the possibility that animals have been trained in more unsavory activities, but there is absolutely nothing cited to support this, and even the Observer article cited later is hazy at best, and talks about unspecified sources of "experts" in the field of...? Dolphin assassin training?

Point is, this section is not appropriate to Wikipedia at all.

Jordanp (talk) 23:25, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Part of the stuff apparently conflates and confuses the inventions of C. Scott Johnson for personal SCUBA anti-shark deterrents with the NMMP. Johnson also did research with the NMMP, as in the canonical bottlenose dolphin behavioral audiogram that he published in 1967. That doesn't mean that dolphins got outfitted with "bang sticks" or similar gadgets. Most likely, some journalist just didn't keep up with Johnson. --Wesley R. Elsberry (talk) 13:48, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Location

Another location used in the past was NAS Point Mugu. There were two concrete ponds approximately 30 feet in diameter near Mugu Lagoon, with a channel opening to the lagoon. When I saw them in the early 1970s, they appeared to have been unused for several years.LorenzoB (talk) 02:55, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I have seen them irl

They are even COOLER than like watching a dolphin documentary. They are so wild and frisky. Love them! (this is slightly non forumish since there might be some way I could help the article, pretty unlikely though.)05:27, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Use of word "sanitized"

The mine clearing section says that some demonstrations are "sanitized for the public" - what does this mean? It implies that non-public operations are somehow different (and perhaps more sinister) than the public demonstrations. If this is what is meant, it should be clarified. If something else is meant, another word should be used. -Etoile ✩ (talk) 22:14, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Use of Pt. Loma photo

This is not a very good photo or way to show the extent of the facility. As the Israelis did with their nuclear facilities, one would surround a sensitive facility with trees to obscure a view. The water makes this easier. Instead this photo should be replaced with an overhead aerial image from google Earth/maps or terraserver. In comparison to other dolphin activities this facility is HUGE, and you can see dolphins, whales, and probably sea lions, in the water just below the surface in these images. 143.232.210.150 (talk) 00:03, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Copyvio

Is there any reason why this book looks so similar to this article?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  03:08, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Because someone took this article and printed it as a book. CMD (talk) 08:00, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

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