Military Dolphins, Sea Lions Save San Francisco From Terror

Brien Aho/U.S. Navy

Smile! You're on Dolphin Camera.

​Trained journalists cover trained beasts

The opportunity to watch Gavin Newsom watch Navy sea lions and dolphins in a terror-fighting exercise was just too good. Scores of creatures, meticulously trained via rote exercises, were on display in Mission Bay.

That would be the press corps, who eagerly snapped and scribbled away as the admittedly wondrous Navy-trained beasts put on a demonstration of what they'd do if terrorists placed a mine on a decrepit San Francisco pier or slowly loitered underwater.

The first test came for sea lions -- named "Zach" and "Gremlin" -- who had to locate a limpet mine the press was tipped was affixed to column number four of the tumbledown pier. After being tossed liberal amounts of fish, the hulking sea creature spotted the mine, and returned to a small boat for more fish and a marker. He placed the marker atop the mine and a human counterpart -- perhaps a real Navy Seal -- hopped in the water to retrieve it.
 

Joe Eskenazi

What's that, Gremlin? Timmy fell down the well?

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The sea lion returns to the boat and a two-legged colleague hits the water

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Mine! Mine all mine!

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The human brandished the mine for all the gathered masses to behold. He received no fish.

And here's some video of the whole thing:

 

The U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program's next demonstration was trickier -- and required the cooperation of three species. First, a dolphin rolled off a boat and into the water. The creature located some divers lurking beneath the waves and released a marker. A seal spotted the marker, swam to the undersea interlopers, and affixed a large leg cuff to the diver's ankle. Human police then reeled the frogman in while menacingly pointing an assault rifle at his head. All in all, kind of like a Sea World show, but with guns.

Here's how that all went down: