Homeland Security

File this under the "you've got to be kidding" tab.

Article

There are discussions about possibly deploying dolphins and sea lions to patrol the water off the coast of Washington (near Seattle) against terrorist attack. I'm not making this up. It gets better. Not only do they believe that the dolphins can use their acute sonar capabilities to detect attack swimmers (potentially carrying bombs or other devices and trying to gain access to a Naval facility housing submarines and other ships), but that the sea lions could put the cuffs on those swimmers. Yes, you read that correctly. sea lions will take clamps on long ropes out into the water and put them on the legs of the swimmer allowing the swimmer to be reeled in.

Some brief observations:

1. Kudos to the Navy for coming up with this idea, it certainly is outside the box and doesn't appear to involve spending billions.
2. Someone needs to do an animated short of this. I mean picture that - it's something you would expect to see on Saturday morning. Maybe call it "Dolphin Defenders". Okay, I stole that from the article about this.
3. Can you imagine being at the meeting where 2 or 3 generals sat around and decided to send in the dolphins and sea lions. "General, I believe my dolphins can handle this mission, they won't let you down."

"Colonel, I like it. Put your best dolphins on it, the safety of the Pacific fleet is at stake. After this succeeds we'll arrange a photo op with the sea lion who apprehends the first terrorist swimmer and the chairman of the joint chiefs."

4. I've got a feeling PETA is going to have something to say about this.
5. If the Navy is going to have to recruit for this mission like NASA did when it fielded the original Mercury astronauts I would like to officially recommend the sea lions at Sea World in San Diego. They are awesome. And I think I saw one on tv recently that was already doing some training - had a guy teaching him to do crunches. Not sure how important that will be.