THE US Navy is good at looking after dolphins – so good, that by the early 1990s, it was caring for too many of them. In November 1991, the US Congress decided to downsize the navy’s marine mammals project, which used captive dolphins to tag mines and spot divers. This left the navy’s marine mammal facility in San Diego, California, with a problem. Letting a captive dolphin “swim free” may sound romantic, but in reality, it is about as ethical as kicking a pet dog out of a car.
It took years before the facility agreed on a retraining and potential…
