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Satellite images show Russia has placed trained dolphins at the entrance to a key Black Sea port, a move that could be designed to help protect a significant Kremlin naval base there, according to a naval analyst.
Images provided to The Washington Post by Maxar Technologies show two dolphin pens at the entrance to the Crimean port of Sevastopol – which Russian forces annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
HI Sutton, a submarine analyst who first reported dolphins to the U.S. Naval Institute on Wednesday, said the pens were moved there in February, around the time of the invasion of Ukraine.
He said dolphins could be used to counter specialized Ukrainian divers trying to enter the port to sabotage Russian warships, a role he said the United States and Russia had previously trained marine mammals.
In an email to The Post, a spokesman for Maxar Technologies agreed with Sutton’s analysis and explanation of the dolphin pens recently taken by their companions.
Some Russian warships are based in the port of Sevastopol, out of range of Ukrainian missiles. The warship Moscow, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, sank this month after being hit by two Ukrainian missiles, inflicting a severe blow on Russia’s naval capability, US and Ukrainian officials said.
Since the 1960s, the US Navy has been training dolphins and sea lions to help protect themselves from underwater threats. According to marine experts, dolphins have the most sophisticated sonar known to science, making them relatively easy to detect mines and other potentially dangerous objects on the ocean floor that are difficult to detect with electronic sonar.
The U.S. Navy’s San Diego-based marine mammal training program was declassified in the 1990s. This has made it easier for officials to counter animal rights activists’ persistent claims that mammals have been used as offensive weapons, a myth promoted by the 1973 science fiction film Dolphin Day, in which a scientist teaches dolphins how to communicate with humans. . . In the film, dolphins were abducted in an attempt to use them as part of a political conspiracy to kill.
Russia reportedly used the base in Sevastopol during the Soviet era to train dolphins for military purposes, such as planting explosives on ships or searching for mines. It is debatable whether they were ever used for military operations. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the facility in Sevastopol was used by Ukraine to train dolphins for therapeutic sessions. Russia has resumed training for marine mammals after taking control of the port city in 2014, the Moscow Times reported at the time.
In 2019, a white whale appeared in Norway wearing a belt, prompting local marine experts to speculate that they had encountered a mammal that is part of Russia’s naval training program, according to media reports. The whale was named “Hwaldimir” by locals – a combination of the Norwegian word for whale and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Paulina Villegas contributed to this report.
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