Iran has scattered mines throughout the Strait of Hormuz. Some sit on the sea floor, some bob free atop the waves, and some are tethered in wait beneath the surface. Iran has even admitted that it lost track of some of them.
Getting rid of enough of these mines to restore commercial shipping traffic is a huge priority for the U.S. Navy, which is beginning mine-clearing operations in the strait as part of President Donald Trump’s plan to blockade Iran. The Defense Department said on Monday that underwater drones would “join the clearance efforts in the coming days.”
But the Navy also has another not-so-secret weapon: dolphins.
Since 1959, the Navy’s Marine Mammal Program has trained bottlenose dolphins to find and mark the locations of mines that could endanger military or civilian ships. Dolphins have served in the Vietnam War, the Iran-Iraq War, and both Operation Noble Eagle and Operation Enduring Freedom, launched after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They’ve guarded harbors and ships, protected a command ship in the Persian Gulf, and hunted for enemy swimmers, according to the U.S. Naval Undersea Museum.
