Peterson, Hetzell, and I started with the training of the newly captured sea lions and putting them through the operant conditioning basics. We were not given much guidance or funds for developing the new mine mission, such as guidance on the expected type of mines to search and recover or the prototype equipment such as mine-like shapes, grabber devices, or even devices the sea lions could use to carry the new grabber devices. There was a bit of a timing misfortune. There were no more EOD personnel attached to Quick Find. Both Sybrant and Busch had transferred. It was EOD that currently performed the practice mine recovery missions for the navy, and we sure could have used their expertise both as EOD technicians and as experienced sea lion trainers.
All new trainers learned to train experienced sea lions in ASROC recovery in San Diego Bay. Here, Gary Young is the coxswain, Tom Waples handling line, and Chuck McPhearson training the sea lion, Thor, with a D5 training grabber.
Peterson, Hetzell, and I all worked with the naïve sea lions about this time in varying capacities, and one of our first duties was to locate potential mine-like shapes. We made many trips to the military defense reutilization and marketing office (DRMO) establishments, commonly called “dumps” in the civilian world. We eventually located several mine-like targets, some of which included real but inert mines, but they ended up being way too heavy for training purposes. We eventually settled on a long but very light aluminum rocket pod shape that was “mine-like.” This was a shape that one man could handle launching and recovering from a small boat.
One of the best ways to learn more about the mine search and recovery mission was to participate in an actual EOD mine exercise (MINEX) of finding, marking, and recovering mines dropped from an aircraft. I was fortunate to be able to participate in the MINEX at San Clemente Island (SCI) with an EOD team. The first thing I learned was that a MINEX involved aircraft airdropping mines in a designated area off SCI, but instead of just one or two items like a QAST shot, they dropped as many as thirty mines. The interesting part was the airdrops may or may not occur where they were supposed to drop.
We used aluminum rocket pods that had a mine-like shape to train the sea lions.
Here the chosen mine-shape is floated on the surface to start the basic mine training behaviors. John Jauzems is driving, Rick Hetzell is line handling, and Ed Felton is the trainer during this training session in Glorietta Bay right next to our facility at Pier 13.
This is an EOD exercise mine and was a candidate QF mock-mine.
The practice mines were dropped from an aircraft rather than shot off a boat.
The airdrop accuracy of the mines meant that we spent a lot of time in the zodiac rubber boats hanging over the gunwales, listening on the pinger receiver headsets, and trying to locate each of the mines’ attached 37 kHz pinger. The problem was twofold: the range of detecting a mine was greater, and there was potential confusion of multiple mine pinger signatures in the same water area at the same time, which made directing the boat driver to the right location a little problematic. Slowly, over a three-day period, we began to isolate the mine pinger signatures, and as we came as close to the mine as we could with the pinger, we had to dive over the side, swim down, and try to visually or acoustically locate and mark the mine underwater. Most of the time, the surface pinger location was accurate, and we were able to find the mines and mark them with buoys. Then the LCU (landing craft utility) would come by and recover and crane each mine onto the boat. The work meant twelve to fourteen hours a day in a wetsuit listening on a headset and then responding quickly with dive gear to locate and mark each mine for recovery. It took every minute of our three-day mission to locate and recover all of the thirty practice mines. It was a very long, hardworking, wet, and windy time, but it was an incredible learning experience. Upon completion, I definitely learned what it was going to take for a sea lion to locate and mark a mine-like shape.
I use a pinger reveiver underwater to lovate a practice mine in ninety feet of water off San Clemente Island during an EOD mine recovery exercise.
The airdrop’s poor accuracy made it much harder to pinpoint the location of the mine with the pinger signatures. We had to dive down to visually or acoustically locate the mine underwater.
One of the problems with this new requirement for training naïve animals and training for a new mission was that all the old Quick Find assets and equipment were still required for the traditional ASROC recovery mission. This meant we did not have the work barge, winch and crane, support boats, mock-up targets, or grabber devices as available as we would like, especially the use of the work barge. This called for us to improvise like the old days in Quick Find. Our first mission was to replace the barge to get the animals to the maritime training area. There was a sixteen-foot Boston Whaler that had been resting upside down on our equipment barge unused. It needed significant hull fiberglass repair work and a refurbished outboard motor. I had the skill to repair and paint the fiberglass on the hull, so that part was easy. Our organization now had available an outboard motor mechanic and repair shop that refurbished and installed the seventy-horsepower Johnson engine. Now, I just had to figure out a way to carry four sea lion cages and the mock-up targets on the refurbished sixteen-foot Boston Whaler. That solution came in an inspiration when I built a six- by ten-foot plywood deck across the seating in the whaler where the sea lion cages could be bolted to the removable plywood decking. I will admit that loading the four cages with sea lions and equipment did make the whaler a little top-heavy, but this system was not meant for going out to sea. It was for inside the harbor training only, and it proved quite effective and safe. There would not always be four cages with animals on board. That was just the maximum capacity the whaler could hold. Usually there would only be two animals and cages on board the boat.
The marine transportation problem was solved. I just needed to figure out what type of mines would be used and what mock-ups we would need to fabricate to serve as training targets. The problem was it was still not known whether the mine targets would be traditional round contact mines or if they would be influence mines, which took many shapes but most would be twoto three-foot-diameter cylindrical shapes. That said, there were also conical shape influence mines like the Manta mine, but it was not predominant in other countries’ mine inventories.
I decided to go with the cylindrical shape because that would represent the preponderance of U.S. and foreign influence mines. Then I had to decide what to use as a mock-up mine trainer. U.S. inventory of training mines would be the logical choice, but a large craft with a winch and crane was required to put these mine trainers in and out of the water. All I had was a sixteen-foot whaler with a human-powered lift, so the mine trainers were out of the question. An inspiration occurred: go to DRMO (military junkyard) to see what shapes were available to represent a two- or three-foot-diameter by five- to six-foot-long cylindrical shape. Numerous shapes were available, and I acquired them, but the one that seemed to work out the best was a former helicopter 2.75-inch Zuni-rocket pod. All that was needed was to remove the rocket holders inside the cylindrical shape pod, and a mock-up target of approximate shape, length, diameter, and, most importantly, lightweight aluminum was the final choice. We copied the ASROC paint scheme using mostly white color with black stripes in the middle of the mine-like shape to use as the appropriate sea lion target zone.
Trainers Mike Kelley (left) and Gary Young (right) use the sixteen-foot Whaler, converted to cary sea lions and the cages.
The grabber device was hand-cut aluminum-shaped and much larger than the mock-mine shape because the training grabber needed to be the diameter of a real mine. The existing D8 and D9 grabber devices were not large enough to encompass a mine shape sitting on the bottom of the ocean. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I did determine to use the grabber-type system for initial mine training, although I seriously doubted that the old type of grabber system could be effective and used to power through the sandy bottom to encompass the mine with a cable recovery system
. What I did was build curved-shaped aluminum grabber arms that were representative of a three-foot-diameter cylindrical shape. There would not be an actual grabber mechanism, just a curved aluminum-shaped arm. Because this new, larger design was three times bigger than the current D8/D9 grabbers, I had to set the mine grabber up to be carried by either a nose cone or bite- plate system for the sea lion. Of course, that would mean training the sea lions to carry either a nose cone or bite-plate system. I kept many of the other mine-like shapes I got from DRMO available in case this rocket pod mine mock-up did not work. Now the mine training could begin.
Sea lion Sinbad uses a bite plate to carry a prototype mine-marking device in the shallow and turbid waters near their home at Pier 13 to mark a practice mine target on the bottom.
Peterson and Hetzell were putting the newly captured sea lions through their basic operant conditioning training. The sea lions had to be trained in the basic behavior of listening for the 9 kHz pinger and touching the pinger to indicate hearing the tone. A magnetic grabber attached to a nose cone trained the sea lion to wear the nose cone and accept the weight of the magnetic attachment device. Accepting a nose cone or a bite plate is basic behavior the naïve sea lion needed to learn. Peterson used a whistle as a bridge between good behavior and fish reward for the sea lion “getting dressed” in the harness. He rewarded the sea lion as he completed tightening the belly strap on the harness.
Once basic operant conditioning steps were completed, one of the next most important behaviors for the sea lion to learn was how to work from a small rubber boat. There were many steps in this process, from just walking the animal into the boat, riding on the gunwale, and diving from and returning to the boat both tethered and untethered. The photo on page 105 shows Rick Hetzell training his naïve sea lion through all of these steps and his sea lion, Scooner, jumping out of the water and onto the gunwale of the rubber boat. Hetzell’s reaction is instinctive as the sea lion brings a good amount of water with him as he jumps into the boat. The wetsuit muzzle on the animal’s mouth is to protect the animal from abrasion by the grabber device cup and has no impact on the animal’s ability to breathe, eat, or bite. The muzzle easily opens as his mouth opens.
Rick Hetzell hangs a 9 kHz pinger over the side of the work barge.
Hetzell helps adjust the nose cup device to the sea lion wearing the muzzle, which provides protection from abrasion of the nose cone. Below, right: The sea lion gets a fish reward.
Dan Peterson trains the sea lion to accept the weight of the nose cone by using a magnetic attachment device.
In this photo, I am driving the boat, Busch is line handler, and Hetzell is the trainer.
My first sea lion that I had full responsibility for was Sinbad, a volunteer into the Quick Find project. I used Sinbad, who already completed this basic training, as the early mine training sea lion. In the meantime, I did begin basic operant conditioning with Papillion.
Sinbad’s story is an interesting one. Sea lions would much rather do a couple hours of work a day for the five to ten pounds of fish than have to hunt for their food all night and day. I don’t know if there is a marine mammal telegraph system in the water, but word must have gotten out about this easier sea lion lifestyle of working a couple hours and then lying around all day in the sun with full stomachs. Sinbad must have heard the marine mammal word. We would go out to sea every day about two to three miles off the coast of Point Loma to train the animals for ASROC recovery. Suddenly, we started seeing this young sea lion popping his head up next to the barge at sea. He was a little different because he would just hang around and watch. Other sea lions would make a quick check of the barge and sea lions and then take off. Even more amazing was we started throwing smelt to Sinbad, and he ate the dead fish. Typically, you would have to train the sea lions to eat dead fish. We figured we would not see him again. The next day at sea, he showed up again and came even closer to the barge. We threw him some fish, and again he ate. This time we put some fish on the deck of the barge just out of his reach in the water. Sure enough, Sinbad jumped up onto the barge deck and ate the fish. Okay, okay, this is too weird. We left and came back the next day, and again Sinbad showed up without prompting. He just jumped onto the deck. This time we left a trail of fish that led right into one of our barge deck cages, and Sinbad followed the fish trail all the way into the cage. We closed the cage, and he did not freak out. I opened the cage right away and gave him a few fish in the water to get him off the boat. We were not sure if we were breaking any marine mammal rules at the time. This was the early ’70s, so the rules were not as strict then. We went back to the base and figured that would be the last we would see of Sinbad because it was Friday; the weekend was coming, and we would not be back out to sea until the following Monday. To our surprise, he showed back up like he was ready to go to work, jumping back on the barge. We led him into the cage, fed him some fish, and let him stay in there while we trained the other animals. He rode back with us on the barge, and when we got to the base, we released him into San Diego Bay. The next day, he showed up to the barge while still tied up to our base pier before going to sea. This animal was persistent about becoming a Quick Find volunteer. We did not take him that day because we needed to check with NUC about whether to let him volunteer. I am not sure at what level we got approval, but the word I got was to go ahead and take him in but to make sure he went to NUC for a full physical. That is how Sinbad became the first volunteer to the Quick Find project.
Sometimes a sea lion did not get his fish reward if he did not complete the task correctly. Here, Rick’s sea lion does not seem happy about not receiving a reward.
I use fish to entice Sinbad onto the thirty-six-foot work barge in San Diego Bay. This is Sinbad before he was enlisted for Project Quick Find duty.
Now that we had necessary transportation, mock-up targets, and grabber devices ready and available, it was time to begin developing the mine search and marking behaviors. Sinbad was the first animal to start this training since he already had learned the basic behaviors of harness training, 9 kHz pinger listening and touching, nose cone/grabber, diving tethered, and identifying and marking an ASROC mock-up. Papillion was in the process of completing that same training.
I reward Sinbad with fish for a good training dive at sea.
Tom Waples uses fish to entice Sinbad onboard the work barge.
Rick Hetzell train Thor in naïve animal behaviors, including dressing stand mounting and harness training on the work barge as it is tied up next to the floating pen.
This sequence of events shows Sinbad with a bite plate and mine grabber hitting the wrong part of the mine (left photo). Then he hits the correct spot at the middle of the mine (middle photo). Sinbad checks his work and swims back to the surface (right photo).
The first behavior was to train the animals where to place a grabber on the mock-up mine, which was all white with dual black stripes about twelve inches thick, each in the center of the cylinder. This behavior introduction began with placing the mine-shape on the deck in the pen and just letting Sinbad touch particular parts of the mine shape. When he touched the black stripes in the middle, we would blow the whistle and then reward him with a fish. Sinbad learned very quickly where to touch his nose on the mine shape. Then we hung the mine shape in the pen community pool just at the water surface and had Sinbad swim from one side of the pool to the other and touch the black stripes. Then we introduced the 9 kHz pinger sound to the mine shape. We built an aluminum mine grabber shape and attached it to a nose cone and had Sinbad place the grabber device on the middle of the mine shape. The mock grabber was about three times the size of the D8 and D9 grabbers, and it seemed very cumbersome for Sinbad to hold this grabber with a nose cone. So we had to train him how to use a bite-plate system, which he picked up very quickly. The bite plate was connected to the mine grabber, and Sinbad was able to control the grabber device much easier when swimming, so we switched over to that system. Papillion had just graduated from his mar
ine mammal basic training, so we started working with him on the basic mine behaviors, as well.
Sinbad looks around impatiently, waiting for me to give him the signal to dive in the water during a training session at sea off Point Loma.
Carrying my five-gallon bucket of fish, I walk Sinbad from the work barge to the Z-boat.
Once Sinbad and Papillion graduated from the basic mine behaviors, we started placing the mine shape with pinger in about ten feet of water right in our pier area. This became more of a challenge for the two because the pier-area waters are murky in that part of San Diego Bay, and the visibility was about two to five feet. This required the sea lions to rely on their audio skills to listen for the 9 kHz pinger until the mine shape came into view. This part of the training process took much longer because both Sinbad and Papillion had very little practical experience listening and locating the pinger, especially in murky water. One of the problems with placing a target in shallow, murky water that required more of the sea lion’s audio skills was that the pinger noise would sometimes reverberate, making it echo and more difficult for the sea lion to obtain the proper direction. It would be almost like an echo underwater but from several directions. We decided to transport to deeper bay waters, between twenty to thirty feet deep, to conduct the training. Not only would the water visibility clear up a bit, but also it would eliminate the pinger echo, making it easier for the animal to get a bearing to the pinger. There was a risk involved with this decision. The animals had not yet mastered the location of the mine in ten feet of water and now we were making them go ten to twenty feet. It was a calculated risk, but it seemed worth it.
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