The Department of NAVY, United State is planning to employ the extremely well-trained bottlenose dolphins to protect one of its endangered relative species called Vaquitas. In this Spring, the US Navy is gearing up to set out its regiment of extremely skilled and trained, bomb-locating bottlenose dolphins for searching out the disappearing rare aquatic species vaquitas. Usually, the trained and bomb-locating dolphins deployed to hunt down the undersea mines or defend against enemy swimmers by using their sonar. But this time, instead of doing their usual tasks, the dolphins will hunt out their small and extremely rare relative creatures called vaquitas. The employment of trained dolphins to search vaquitas is an effort of the US Navy to preserve the last generation of this quickly vanishing porpoises.
By employing the trained dolphins, the Navy officials are expecting the natural sonar to accomplish what technology failed to do -: locate the rarest vaquitas and put in shielding vicinity.
According to Jim Fallin of the U.S. Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific, “The trained dolphins usually deployed for hunting down the hidden submarine mines, this time will only focus on locating their tiny relatives called vaquitas by using their natural sonar. The dolphins would indication by embryonic and chronic to the ship from which they were dispatched.” All the dolphins selected for the mission are trained by the Navy Marine Mammal Program.
As per the detailed official reports of Ben Goldfarb for Environment 360, the living number of vaquitas across the globe is less than 60, most of which are living in the wedge of the sea called the Gulf of California which came apart the Sonoran Desert, located in Mexico. In 2014, the number of vaquitas was around 97, which dropped down to 60 in 2016. Over the last 20 years, the rare aquatic species are going closer to the complete extinction, because of gillnets that poachers apply to seize a giant totoaba fish. Along with Vaquitas, the gigantic fish totoaba is also notably dying out because China is using the swim bladder for formulating the traditional Chinese medicine as well as a delicacy in Chinese cuisine.