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Full post mortems have yet to be carried out, but in the
meantime only one theory has been proposed that could
explain the mysterious wounds.
Leo Sheridan, an accident investigator from the village of
Ariège, has assembled a mass of documents, clippings and
charts that he claims prove his case. "I am convinced that
these were dolphins trained by the US navy, and that
something went badly wrong," he told the Observer (March 1).
"They were disposed of to conceal the existence of the
Americans' military dolphin programme."
It is widely known that the US Navy, and formerly that of
the Soviet Union, have experimented with using dolphins for
military purposes such as planting limpet mines and smashing
enemy divers in the sternum. After the end of the Cold War,
many of these dolphins were believed to have been sold at
knock-down prices, and the Observer does not explain why
Sheridan believes these dolphins are related to the US
programme.
According to Sheridan, the US Navy launched a classified
programme, the Cetacean Intelligence Mission, in 1989. This
involved placing harnesses around the dolphins' necks and
implanting small electrodes under the skin. Working in teams
of four, they were then taught to patrol nuclear submarines
in port and stationary warships at sea.
At first, they were taught to recognise enemy divers as a
threat, and the stress levels they exhibited were picked up
by the electrodes and transmitted back to a control room.
Later, two-way communications was developed to allow the
control room to stimulate the dolphins to attack intruding
divers by forcing them down to a dangerous depth.
Also packed in the harness, says Sheridan, was a small
explosive charge on the underside of the neck which would be
detonated by remote control if a dolphin became over-
stressed or went missing, as amorous males are prone to do.
"It seems to me no accident that these dolphins first began
washing up in the middle of a military crisis when American
warships and submarines were en route to the Gulf," said
Sheridan to the Observer. "Sixteen, in other words four
teams, display this distinctive wound. And that wound is
consistent with a small detonation."
Sheridan believes control over the dolphins was lost in an
accident while they were being lowered into the Mediterranean, either from a warship or a helicopter, and
they were killed to avoid discovery.
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