Why Are These Mine-Sniffing Dolphins in a Cargo Plane?
Photos show a group of six U.S. Navy dolphins aboard a U.S. Air Force transport.
The dolphins were headed to an undisclosed location for a training exercise.
The Navy trains dolphins to locate undersea mines, a job they can do much faster than human divers.
The U.S. Air Force transported a group of U.S. Navy dolphins in a heavy lift cargo plane, and there are pictures to prove it. The photos, which recently emerged on social media, show half a dozen Mark 7 Marine Mammal Systems, also known as dolphins, aboard a C-17 Globemaster III transport. The Mark 7s were being transported to an undisclosed location, reportedly for a training exercise.
The photos first appeared at the Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook forum. The first photo (above) shows at least six Mark 7s in blue, water-filled cradles. The dolphins are suspended in what look like stretchers, to hold them in place for the long trip.
The U.S. Navy maintains an unknown number of dolphins trained to locate undersea mines. But the Navy can’t simply refer to them as dolphins, so instead the service assigned them an official designation—the Mark 7 Marine Mammal System. The Navy’s dolphins last surfaced in 2018 when they participated in the biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises.
Mark 7s are trained to search a designated stretch of water for sea mines. Once a dolphin locates one, it releases a tag next to the mine. The tag floats on the surface, marking the mine’s location for humans to investigate and neutralize. Although it’s a bit unusual seeing animals in today’s modern U.S. military, dolphins work very well and can search an area more quickly than human divers.
We don’t know much else about the photos, including these dolphins' final destination. According to the post, the aircraft was serviced by a Maintenance Repair Team from the 60th Maintenance Squadron, located at Northern California’s Travis Air Force Base.
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