Marked for Duty

The Navy has been training dolphins since the Vietnam War. Dolphins patrolled San Diego harbor in 1996 during the Republican National Convention. Sea lions and dolphins were sent in 2003 to stop swimmers off Bahrain. The Navy has about 100 dolphins and sea lions, most of them in San Diego. About 20 protect Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia.

To comply with the federal judge's order to study the effect of cold water on bottlenose dolphins, the Navy has in recent years transported them to waters off Maine, Alaska and Scandinavia.

"The animals did fine," LaPuzza said, but he noted that they spent most of their time in heated enclosures. In Puget Sound, the animals would have heated pens and would be exposed to cold water in short shifts.

But skeptics such as Naomi A. Rose, a marine mammal scientist for the Humane Society of the United States, said that dolphins, a highly social and intelligent species, should not be held captive for any reason. She particularly objects, on ethical grounds, to their being used for military purposes.

"They are not reliable soldiers," she said. "They think they are just having fun."

Rose said the Navy's marine mammal center in San Diego provides the best veterinarian care in the United States. But keeping dolphins in captivity in a noisy harbor and transporting them around the world causes too much stress, she said. Citing a U.S. government database, she said captive dolphins live about as long as their wild cousins, but no longer. Given that Navy dolphins have medical care, abundant food and protection from predators, Rose said it is worrisome that they do not live longer. She blames stress. The lifespan of a dolphin in the wild is about 30 years.

The Navy says that Rose is wrong and that its dolphins do live considerably longer than creatures in the wild. Everyone agrees that sea lions live longer in the Navy program, mostly because they are protected from sharks and killer whales.

In the four decades that the Navy has been training dolphins -- and taking them on periodic "open ocean walks" where they are free to escape -- nine dolphins have done just that. Rose suggests that the dolphins went AWOL because they preferred life in the wild. The Navy disagrees.

"The way we look at it is they got lost and they are trying to find us as hard as we are trying to find them," LaPuzza said. The disappearances stopped 10 years ago when the Navy outfitted its dolphins with electronic tracking devices called pectoral fin pingers.

A decision on whether Navy dolphins and sea lions will come to Puget Sound is expected to take at least a year. While they wait, dolphin admirers on Bainbridge Island will knit.

"We are looking for neoprene yarn," Bailey said.