IRAQ (27 Mar 2003) -- The U.S. Navy added two dolphins Wednesday to the divers and minesweepers looking for anti-ship mines in the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr and the murky waterway that leads out of it to the Persian Gulf. Waiting in the gulf is a British relief ship, the RFA Sir Galahad, loaded with fresh water and food for Iraqi citizens caught between colliding armies. In Navy parlance, the dolphins are referred to as "Mark VII Systems," meaning they are trained specifically to seek out bottom-hugging anti-ship mines buried in the 2 feet of soft mud in the harbor and tidal flats of the Khawr Abd Allah River, said Navy Lt. Doug Flannery, a diver helping to coordinate the search efforts aboard the USS Ponce. The dolphins - Tacoma and Makai - are also trained to locate mines floating from anchors in deeper water. Rewarded with fish, the dolphins circle through the water in front of divers in black rubber boats and are trained to touch with their nose a yellow tennis ball hanging off the boat if they find a mine. When they do, divers place a nosecone on the dolphin, which swims back and uses it to mark the location of the contact. A small buoy floats to the surface above, and human divers then swim over to investigate. "You see a little bit of a black shape in the water if you find something," Flannery said. Divers use special air tanks to minimize metal signatures near the mines, he added. "You have to be careful, because you'll be right up on top of that mine shape before you can identify it." The work is difficult and serious even to dolphins who spend their off time roughhousing with each other in their large inflatable pool in the back of the Gunston Hall. "When they're working, they don't play," Flannery said. "This isn't Sea World." Rear Adm. Barry Costello, the American officer overseeing the mine-clearing work, said floating and bottom-hugging mines have been found in stranded boats, intercepted barges and captured warehouses in Umm Qasr and the Khawr Abd Allah in recent days. Both kinds of mines were blamed for explosions that crippled the USS Tripoli and USS Princeton during the 1991 gulf war. No new mines have been found underwater in the search that began when U.S. and British Royal Marines assaulted Umm Qasr and the neighboring Al Faw Peninsula last week. | | The search by six British and four American minesweepers along the Khawr Abd Allah into Umm Qasr has delayed delivery of humanitarian relief. Ahead of the minesweepers, two MH-53E helicopters in recent days have towed hydrofoils through the water, designed to explode undiscovered mines by giving off the electromagnetic and noise signatures of passing ships. A third helicopter has towed a side-scanning sonar through the water, identifying possible mines for investigation by squads of divers from the U.S., Britain and Australia. Any suspected mine contact -- whether identified by dolphin, minesweeper or helicopter -- must be checked by human divers who are restricted to working just a few hours a day by heavy tidal currents. "We have poor conditions right now: High currents, high turbidity, high amounts of sediment transported in the water," said Navy Capt. Michael O'Moore, commodore of the joint U.S. and British mine clearing effort. One dockside berth has been cleared in the Umm Qasr harbor, he said, along with a narrow pathway out to sea. Though helicopter and minesweeper operations were halted when a heavy sandstorm kicked up waves and blanked out visibility Wednesday, divers and dolphins are continuing to work in the harbor, said Royal Navy Lt. Cmdr. Don Crosbie, the mission's operations officer. Though mine clearing is by definition a deliberate process, frustration with the water and weather conditions has mounted even among experienced divers. "The visibility is nil and the bottom is thick black mud," said Crosbie, a former diver. "It's pretty extreme. You're right on the edge of being able to do it." The dolphins are less impeded, Flannery said. They were transported in water-filled boxes to Umm Qasr by helicopter Tuesday evening from the nearby USS Gunston Hall. |
