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Satellite photos show Russia has placed trained dolphins at the entrance of a key Black Sea port, in a move that a naval analyst says could help protect a key Kremlin naval base there.
Images provided to the Washington Post by Maxar Technologies show two dolphin pens at the entrance to the port of Sevastopol in Crimea – which Russian forces annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Hello SuttonA submarine analyst who first reported on the dolphins for the US Naval Institute on Wednesday said the pens were moved there in February, around the time of the invasion of Ukraine.
He said the dolphins could be used to counter specialized Ukrainian divers attempting to enter the port to sabotage Russian warships – a role the United States and Russia have previously trained marine mammals for.
In an email to The Post, a spokesman for Maxar Technologies agreed with Sutton’s analysis and explanation of the dolphin pens recently captured by their satellites.
A number of Russian warships are stationed in the port of Sevastopol, out of range of Ukrainian missiles. The warship Moskva – the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet – sank this month after being hit by two Ukrainian missiles, dealing a significant blow to the capacity of the Russian Navy, US and Ukrainian officials said.
Since the 1960s, the US Navy has trained dolphins and sea lions to protect them from underwater threats. According to marine experts, dolphins have the most sophisticated sonar known to science, making it relatively easy for them to spot mines and other potentially dangerous objects on the sea floor that are difficult to detect with electronic sonar.
The US Navy’s marine mammal training program, based in San Diego, was declassified in the 1990s. That made it easier for officials to counter persistent claims by animal rights activists that the mammals were being used as offensive weapons — a myth popularized by the 1973 sci-fi film The Day of the Dolphin, in which a scientist trains dolphins to use them to communicate with people. In the film, the dolphins were kidnapped to be used as part of a political assassination.
Russia reportedly used the Sevastopol base during the Soviet era to train dolphins for military purposes such as planting explosives on ships or searching for mines. Whether they were ever used for military operations is a matter of debate. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Sevastopol facility was used by Ukraine to train dolphins for therapy sessions. Russia resumed military marine mammal training after taking control of the port city in 2014, the Moscow Times reported at the time.
In 2019, a beluga whale appeared in Norway with a harness – leading local marine experts to speculate they had encountered a mammal that was part of a Russian naval training program, according to media reports. The whale was nicknamed “Hvaldimir” 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.