Chief Gordy Sybrant and LT Paul Plumb speak with reporters during a VIP day on the navy support ship in Norfolk, Virginia, prior to an ASROC mission.
Trainer Bud Dennehy and Akahi look eye-to-eye at the end of the long working day before removing the harness and letting Akahi join the other animals in the community pool.
Secondly, QAST shots involved our largest and most dominant sea lions like Fatman and Akahi, and neither of these animals was too tolerant of performing circus acts. Another reason was that too much confusing activity, with multiple people present, big film equipment, extra noise, and generally a lot of unfamiliar activity, would sometimes make the animals nervous. One time during a media event, Tom McHugh brought Fatman on the dressing stand simply to put on his harness, a behavior he had performed hundreds of times. There was some extra activity and confusion going on from the media, and when Tom turned his head and gazed away, Fatman grabbed the biceps on his arm and shook it around like it was a rag doll. Tom got Fatman to release his arm, and he immediately undressed Fatman and put him back into the portable pen on the ship. Keep in mind, the animals are already wary about being in a new location and on a ship or boat that has a lot of extra ambient noise. Exposing these dominant animals to additional confusion can be hazardous. Tom had to get several stitches in his arm, but he stayed with us and performed on the QAST shot.
Chief Gordy Sybrant and LT Paul Plumb speak with reporters during VIP day in Norfolk.
Some of the most burdensome sea lion demonstrations usually occurred with visiting military, government service, or political dignitaries. These were especially burdensome because the demonstration timing was totally controlled by the schedule of the dignitaries, regardless of whether the animals already had a long day and were already fed or not. It also meant that we were attired in our best and most starched green uniforms and hats trying to handle wet and poopy sea lions and trying to keep them calm while we waited for the dignitary to finally show up late. These demonstrations would occur regardless of time, day or night. Luckily for us, the dignitaries’ schedules were usually very condensed, which meant we would have a short and sweet demonstration of just putting a sea lion on the dressing stand and letting the dignitary touch the animal if desired. Of course that came with a warning from the trainer to the dignitary to proceed at his own risk. Usually, we had Gump on the stand so there really was no real risk involved, but it was good to watch the dignitary react a little. Maybe there was a little childish “payback” involved by the trainer because of the inconvenience of the situation. I will never confirm or deny the truth of this.
Star of the Omaha Mutual Wild Kingdom series, Marlin Perkins gets a kiss on the cheek from Akahi during the filming of the show.
Of all the types of demonstrations we conducted, the film production events were the ones that were the most work but were also the most fun. These events were fairly convenient because the film crews usually adapted to our schedules and accompanied us during normal training days at sea. Occasionally, it would mean working on the weekends, but that was not too often. The film production events that were the most memorable were Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins and The Mike Douglas Talk Show. One event that helped me the most was a Skin Diver magazine feature story.
Perkins feeds Akahi a reward fish as trainer Rick Hetzell supervises the demonstration.
Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom TV show involved its main actor, Marlin Perkins, scuba diving on our ASROC training targets, as well as riding in the Z-bird with the sea lions during training at sea. He had very recognizable silver hair that needed to be visible during all filming, and that meant he could not wear a wetsuit hood while diving underwater. The water temperatures in the ocean off Point Loma were in the low sixty degrees. He also had to wear his wetsuit topside all day long in the sun so he could be ready at any moment to get in the water with his underwater film crew. He was one of the toughest older guys I had ever seen, and despite the fact that he was the TV show star, he never grumbled or complained.
The director of Wild Kingdom was not pleased with the underwater visibility off Point Loma, so he asked Gordy if there was anywhere they could film the underwater scenes. Gordy suggested they could film off Santa Catalina Island, just “twenty-six miles across the sea,” as the song says. That, of course, was a significant logistic and expensive issue. My understanding is the show paid the costs, but we used a Navy LCU and loaded everyone, animals, and equipment onboard and used the LCU as our base of operations off the coast of Santa Catalina.
A high view of the casino and Avalon Harbor at Santa Catalina Island, where the final scenes of the Wild Kingdom episodes covering Project Quick Find were filmed.
Underwater photograph of a sea lion properly placing the D9 grabber device on the mock-ASROC target tail cone.
Project Quick Find was featured on the daily Mike Douglas Show.
The LCU anchored offshore of Catalina to take advantage of the much clearer waters. Now the Wild Kingdom underwater film crew could set up its equipment and film the sea lion locating and attaching the grabber device on the mock-ASROC target.
The Mike Douglas Show was a daytime television talk show that ran from 1961 to 1982. This particular production did require weekend work and adapting to the show schedule, but the good news was it was filmed at the Coronado Boy Scout boat ramp only five hundred yards from our Quick Find building and sea lion pens. This was also a Fourth of July weekend that included a full-scale Naval Special Warfare demonstration of Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) and Sea, Air, Land (SEAL) operational demonstrations, so we were not the only ones working on a holiday. Mike Douglas interviewed the movie actor Cliff Robertson, who also rode in an SDV to the boat ramp pier and hopped on the pier for a closeup demonstration by trainer Mike Kelley and Akahi on the dressing stand. Mike Douglas attempted to interview Akahi, but since he would not participate, Mike interviewed our OIC at that time, LT Don Ridgeway, along with the trainer Mike Kelley. The inshore undersea warfare group commander was present and participated in the interview. Cliff Robertson did manage to elicit a cheek kiss from Akahi for a fish reward. A sea lion was on standby in a Z-bird nearby just in case Akahi did not like all of the noise and activity, but he not only behaved but also put up with a little of the circus performance. Akahi stole the show.
Trainer Mike Kelley watches closely as sea lion Akahi kisses the movie star Cliff Robertson. TV star Mike Douglas and Quick Find OIC LT Don Ridgeway watch the scene.
Mike Douglas interviewed the movie actor Cliff Robertson.
Akahi places the D5 training grabber in the proper location on the mock-ASROC training target for a photo that ended up as the cover and poster for Skin Diver magazine.
Chief Gordon Sybrant, me, and John Busch show our sea lions to Skin Diver magazine writer Bill Barrada.
The Skin Diver magazine event was pretty simple and nonintrusive. The writer, Bill Barrada, simply accompanied us out to sea for standard ASROC recovery training off Point Loma. What made this memorable was that the writer and Skin Diver asked me to do the underwater photography for this article, and I gladly obliged. Those were still film days, so I used my Nikonos-III underwater camera with dual strobes and a 15mm wide-angle lens borrowed from Combat Camera Group. Underwater visibility off Point Loma varied quite often due to sea and weather conditions, so I used the widest-angle lens available so I could get as close to the ASROC mock-up target as possible to catch the sea lion placing one of the grabber devices on the tail cone of the target. We knew that we would need to go deep enough for clearer water and for the sea lion but shallow enough for the diver. We settled on putting the target at ninety feet to maximize diver bottom time but also keep the target deep enough for the animal. Luckily on this day, the sea conditions were flat, and the water visibility at ninety feet deep was a good thirty feet, making it ideal conditions for underwater photography. The only drawback was that at the ninety-foot depth, it got dark, which reduced the chances for seeing the sea lion approac
h the target. The photographer had to be ready to shoot with no notice because the sea lion’s approach blended into the dark background. Seeing the sea lion hitting the target with the grabber would almost be a surprise every time. This photography assignment literally lived up to the saying “capturing the moment.”
We only had a moment to photograph from when the sea lion hit the target and disappeared, ascending to the surface. Magazines required color slides in those days, so I had to wait several days for the slides to get processed and mounted before I knew whether I got any useable images. There were a couple of nervous days having to wait. I did not want to mess up my first opportunity for shooting for a popular magazine. There was no pay with this assignment, but there were credit lines that could help get me established as a photographer. The results were great! I got several usable images to be included in the article, with one of them turning into a poster for Skin Diver magazine, as well as the cover photograph. That photograph is also the cover photo for this book; it shows a sea lion diving and implanting a D5 grabber onto the training ASROC target.
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PHOTOJOURNALISM AND PROJECT QUICK FIND
Photographing for Skin Diver magazine ended up being a great opportunity for my soon-to-be new life in military photojournalism. In 1977, my wife and I loaded up my blue Dodge van with all of our household goods and drove across country from San Diego to Syracuse, New York. That was our first experience of living in snow, which totalled over 180 inches that year. I attended the Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University for a year. That was one of the most challenging years of my life, but that story is for another book. Once I graduated from Syracuse, I had to temporarily leave the SEAL community and serve as a regular navy photographer assigned on a tour as a military photojournalist. That change of duty station led me to the Chief of Naval Technical Training Command (CNTECHTRA) in Millington, Tennessee, as the staff photojournalist. This command had all the navy’s technical training schools under its command, which included Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL (BUD/S) training in Coronado, California. I decided to do a photo story about BUD/S training, and while I was there in Coronado, I decided to do a story on Project Quick Find to see how the program had progressed since I had left two years prior. Project Quick Find was not technically under CNTECHTRA command, but the staff public affairs officer for whom I worked did not mind me staying extra time in Coronado to do the story on Project Quick Find. It was still a sought-after and interesting story to be told, and I had arranged for the story to be published in the navy’s Faceplate magazine.
My good friend and fellow BUD/S class-55 mate Marshall Dean Daugherty was the LT and OIC of Project Quick Find. This was fortuitous because it helped me gain full access to photographing and writing about the project. I knew some things would have changed at Quick Find in the last two years. I was pleased to see the progress that they had made. There were still a few trainers at Quick Find whom I knew, such as Bud Dennehy, who was now the lead trainer. Dennehy had become Fatman’s trainer. It was interesting that in two years, Project Quick Find had begun training sea lions for both the mine mission and continuing the ASROC recovery mission.
My story on Project Quick Find appeared in the navy’s Faceplate magazine.
The latter ASROC mission was occurring in deeper depths, with potential for a recovery as deep as 750 feet. LT Daugherty, the current Quick Find OIC, had come up with an innovative solution to train the sea lions to this deeper depth. Training sea lions off Point Loma for the maximum depth of 500 feet required daily transits to almost five miles off Point Loma. This resulted in a total thirty-four-mile round-trip transit every day, which added a lot of extra transit time, made training days much longer and fuel costs much higher. Trying to find the new 750-foot maximum water depth off Point Loma would add many more miles and hours to the already burdensome time and distance. It was LT Daugherty’s idea to temporarily move the sea lions to San Clemente Island (SCI), where 750 feet of water depth was just a couple miles offshore. It was a secure military land and water area, and the water was pristine compared to Point Loma. LT Daugherty took his trainer personnel, sea lions, pens, boats, and all required equipment to SCI for about four months. They trained during the week, and the trainers would fly home for the weekend, except for the watch stander, who had watch and stayed the weekend.
Personnel who worked on SCI were LT Dean Daugherty, Bud Dennehy, Bill Check, and one trainer who passed away during that time, Harry Bush. The sea lions were Gigi and Andy. Gigi was the sea lion that was able to dive to the 750-foot depth.
My good friend and OIC of Project Quick Find, LT Marshall Dean Daugherty carries a sea lion down the long gangway to the floating pier and dock at San Clemente Island. Being carried was a new behavior the sea lions needed to learn.
Akahi jumps back into the rubber boat, splashing trainer Bud Dennehy while training at sea out on San Clemente Island.
Project Quick Find crew at San Clemente Island. Left to right: LT Dean Daugherty, Harry Busch, Bill Check, and Bud Dennehy, holding Gigi the sea lion that dove 750 feet to recover an ASROC.
A sea lion, using a bite plate, pushes a new probe device through an eyelet on the mock-ASROC trainer. Working with both the bite plate and probe grabber devices were new behaviors the animals needed to learn.
Sea lion sits on Bud Dennehy’s lap with LT Dean Daugherty in the passenger seat as they drive to the pier at San Clemente Island. Learning to ride in the truck front seat was a new behavior for the sea lions, which they learned quickly.
Bud Dennehy carries his sea lion up the steep and long gangway at San Clemente Island pier.
The move to SCI also helped with the new mine mission, where the trainers could place the mock mine target in shallower water with forty- to fifty-foot water visibility, enabling the trainer to watch whether the sea lion contacted the right section of the mine. Normally, this would require placing a scuba diver in the water to signal with a buoy on the surface that the sea lion hit the right target. SCI clear water eliminated that scuba diver observation requirement. The move to SCI did add to some additional behaviors for the animals to learn. In some cases, the new behaviors were simply logistical in that the sea lion needed to learn to ride in the pickup truck and learn to walk or be carried down a very long and steep gangway to get from the SCI pier down to the floating boat dock that was a good twenty feet below.
The other new behaviors were operational. The mine project changed from a grabber mechanism on a bite plate or nose cone to a probe device on a bite plate. The sea lions needed to learn how to place the probe device through a padeye on the tail of an ASROC target or on the mine target. This probe-to-padeye behavior was a little more difficult for the sea lions to master, but it was a significant improvement over the much more cumbersome mine grabber device, which was significantly larger in size than the new probe device. This QF group did one mine recovery demonstration in Charleston, South Carolina, after an ASROC recovery. CAPT Christianson from MINERON 12 asked if the mine recovery could be done, and LT Daugherty said they could do it in two weeks. The previous work of changing the sea lions from the nose cone to the bite-plate mechanism enabled the sea lions to make multiple attempts to place the probe grabber into the mine padeye. The bite-plate probe-grabber system also enabled the sea lions to improve the ASROC recovery to one connection every time. Under LT Daugherty’s leadership, this group of trainers had advanced the Project Quick Find capabilities significantly in both the ASROC and mine missions.
Sea lion just misses placing the new probe grabber device through the eyelet on the tail of the mock-ASROC trainer. This probe grabber/eyelet system was later used for both ASROC and mine recoveries.
Grumpy Fatman is impatient for his reward of fish as Bud Dennehy removes his harness at the end of a long training day. Fatman could care less about the beautiful sunset behind him. He just wants his fish!
As a navy photojournalist covering Project Quick Find, I was published in National Geographic Wor
ld, Skin Diver magazine, Reader’s Digest, and multiple other civilian and military magazines and papers across the country.
This completed my association with Project Quick Find in 1978; I look back and realize what a tremendous opportunity and blessing I had of transitioning through three distinct and separate occupations as a SEAL point man, sea lion trainer, and navy photojournalist. Project Quick Find sea lion recovery of objects from the sea floor still continues to this day but under different program names.
The program and names of the trainers and sea lions have all changed, but the spirit of Project Quick Find continues.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author CDR Michael P. Wood (USN Ret.) tells the story of Project Quick Find. He served as a Navy SEAL point man in Vietnam but transferred to Project Quick Find, where he used his navy photographer and marine mammal trainer experience to document the program from 1972 to 1979.
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