Sea mines are sophisticated, expensive weapons that are designed to work in the ocean where they can sink ships, destroy landing craft, and kill or injure personnel. Sea mines are made so that they cannot be set off easily by wave action or marine animals growing on or bumping into them. If undetected, sea mines can be deadly, destructive weapons. 

The U.S. Navy has found that the biological sonar of dolphins, called echolocation, makes them uniquely effective at locating sea mines so they can be avoided or removed. 

Other marine mammals like the California sea lion also have demonstrated the ability to mark and retrieve objects for the Navy in the ocean. In fact, marine mammals are so important to the Navy that there is an entire program dedicated to studying, training, and deploying them. 

It is appropriately called the Navy Marine Mammal Program (NMMP).

The development, training, veterinary care, and research facility that supports today's Navy Marine Mammal Program is centered in the Biosciences Division of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center San Diego (SSC San Diego). 

However, the Navy's work with marine mammals has been going on for many years. It got its start in the late 1950s when the Navy began to study the unique attributes of marine mammals such as the hydrodynamics of the dolphin. By understanding how dolphins move in the water, perhaps the Navy could improve torpedo, ship, and submarine designs. 

Soon the Navy realized that dolphins would be valuable assistants to Navy divers working in the open ocean. Unlike human divers, dolphins are capable of making repeated deep dives without experiencing the bends or decompression sickness. They also found that dolphins and sea lions are highly reliable, adaptable, and trainable marine animals that could be conditioned to search for, detect, and mark the location of objects in the water.

In the early days of the program, various marine mammal species were considered including: killer whales, pilot whales, belugas (white whales), Steller sea lions, grey seals, and fur seals. 

Other animals were used in various studies pertaining to locating personnel from downed aircraft and creating effective shark deterrents to protect them until they could be rescued. 

As the animals were assessed for their capabilities, much about their basic biology was learned.

Today, bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions perform a number of important functions such as protecting ports and Navy assets from swimmer attack, locating and attaching recovery hardware to expensive exercise and training targets, and locating potentially dangerous sea mines.

Ever since the Navy realized the amiability of dolphins and sea lions and their potential for working in the sea with human partners, the Navy Marine Mammal Program has relied on the proven techniques of operant conditioning, emphasizing the use of positive reinforcement (correct responses are rewarded while incorrect responses are ignored) to train its animals. 

The early history of the NMMP coincided with the adaptation and growing use of those techniques among marine mammal trainers and has made a large contribution to pioneering and developing methods commonly used in the industry today.

Training is an important element of a Navy animal's life. In addition to achieving the remarkable behavioral feats the animals perform in the open ocean, training also supplements husbandry and care practices, and provides the mental and physical stimulation that contributes to overall health and welfare.

Enemy sea mines have been responsible for 14 of the 19 Navy ships destroyed or damaged since 1950. That is why the Navy created the mine hunting systems. 

The mine detection systems are MK 4, MK 7, and MK 8 MMS. In the operation of these systems, a dolphin waits to receive a cue from its handler before it begins to search a specific area using its biological sonar called echolocation. 

When a dolphin echolocates, it emits a series of clicks that bounce off an object and return to the dolphin, allowing a dolphin to construct a mental image of the object. The dolphin reports back to its handler, giving one response if a target object is detected and a different response if no target object is detected. 

If a "mine-like" target is detected, the handler sends the dolphin to mark the location of the object so it can be avoided by Navy vessels or dealt with by Navy divers.

The MK 4 MMS uses dolphins for detecting and/or marking the location of sea mines that are tethered off the ocean bottom. These deep-water mines are easy targets for the dolphin's highly effective echolocation. 

The MK 4 MMS offers reliable and effective mine detection, classification, and marking capabilities in areas that are highly cluttered or where rough seabed, high marine growth, and other complex acoustic conditions hamper the performance of Navy hardware systems.

In the MK 7 MMS, dolphins are trained to detect and/or mark the location of mines sitting on the ocean bottom or buried in sediment. 

The dolphins are sent out after the first troops have gone into the area. They help to clear a wider path of safety for additional troops and equipment.

MK 8 MMS is a human/dolphin team that allows troops to quickly identify safe corridors for the initial landing of troops ashore. MK 8 MMS operates with a low profile in very shallow water.

The Shallow Water Intruder Detection System (SWIDS) is a proposed capability that uses specially trained MK 5 MMS sea lions to locate water-borne intruders and suspicious objects near piers and ships that pose a possible threat to military forces in the area. It has been shown to be effective under and around ships, piers, and in open water.

The SWIDS capability demonstration was deployed to Bahrain as part of the effort to support missions under Operation Enduring Freedom.

While dogs work as effective sentries on land, dolphins and sea lions cannot be outmatched as sentries in the water. In the MK 6 MMS, dolphins effectively protect piers, ships, harbors, and anchorages against unauthorized swimmers, SCUBA divers, closed-circuit divers, and swimmer delivery vehicles.

MK 6 MMS was first operationally deployed during the Vietnam War from 1971 to 1972 and Bahrain from 1986 to 1987.

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