Ukraine, one of the top-10 unvisited vacation spots, relaunched its dolphin warfare division not long ago.
Really.
Starting around 1973, the late Soviet Union had a program that trained dolphins to detect underwater weapons and attack enemy divers.
When the Soviet Union split up, Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, got to keep the dolphin program.
The enlisted dolphins have been working with disabled children and performing other civilian tasks, until the Ukraine navy decided to restart the military training.
Trouble is, three of these highly trained, militarized dolphins recently went AWOL.
Possibly.
The dolphins decided to skip out on military training to go find a mate.
Someone must've told them it was Spring Break, and no amount of dolphin treats was going to stand in the way of gettin' some dolphin lovin'.
The human need to kill enemies has been overcome by the evolutionary priority of having dolphin babies. It's kind of sweet, when you think about it.
While some have denied the existence of the program, others have gone on the record to acknolwedge it. The RIA Novosti news service quoted Yury Plyachenko, a former anti-sabotage officer in the Soviet navy, saying, "Control over dolphins was quite common in the 1980s."
But apparently, that control only went so far.
"If a male dolphin saw a female dolphin during the mating season, then he would immediately set off after her. But they came back in a week or so," Plyachenko said.
They came back in a week or so, probably after she told him she was pregnant -- or at least when Spring Break was over.
In this case, however, three dolphins have failed to return.
Maybe they decided to keep the female dolphins, get civilian jobs, and help raise those dolphin pups.
Maybe, while partying at their Spring Break destination, they were incarcerated for disorderly conduct or simple possession of marijuana.
But those scenarios are probably too optimistic. As RIA Novosti reported,
A military source in Sevastopol told RIA Novosti last year that the Ukrainian navy had restarted training dolphins to attack enemy combat swimmers and detect mines. The killer-dolphins would be trained to attack enemy combat swimmers using special knives or pistols fixed to their heads, the source said.
Killer dolphins, possibly gone rogue. Stay out of the water.
This is James Bond material at its best.
Imagine a world leader taking a leisurely swim at an expensive, exotic, seaside resort. Suddenly, his eyes go wide and the water around him turns crimson. No one saw anything -- except a dolphin fin slipping under the water line.
I've often thought back to a headline in The Onion: "Dolphins develop opposable thumbs." The human race, we all thought, would be doomed. Them dolphins, after all, are smart ones.
Little did we know opposable thumbs weren't necessary. Military technology and dolphin training can make up for what evolution hasn't provided -- efficient killing power.
I don't think these highly trained aquatic mammals are going to get caught in a tuna net, and that has me scared.
I live near the ocean, in Myrtle Beach, S.C. It turns out that years of traffic jams, car alarms in hotel parking decks, and stray bottle rockets made up our Golden Age.
Now, we are under a real threat, a serious threat. We are made vulnerable by our shoreline, thanks to the Ukrainian navy and the urge to reproduce.
Perhaps, when the remaining candidates for chair of the Horry County Council begin their run-off campaign, they can skip all this talk about roads and jobs and get to the critical issue for our county in our time: international marine security.
-Colin Foote Burch
