Dolphins, the Navy, Animal Rights and Ranching

I had a difficult decision to make the other day: whether to vote Yes or No to approve a permit for the US Navy to bring four bottlenose dolphins into the state for a couple of weeks to further their training in mine detection.  Because bottlenose dolphins are on the State of Hawaii's Restricted Organisms List Part B, the Navy needs to get a permit from the State of Hawaii Department of Agriculture whenever they bring their dolphins into the state.  Mostly these permits are approved at the "ministerial" level, that is at the discretion of the department chairperson and without a public comment mechanism.  However the permit conditions needed to be updated so the matter was brought before the Board of Agriculture, of which I am a member, and in a public meeting format.

It was difficult because it was a layered decision.  Looking at it from the purely legal standpoint there were some difficulties, because the permit was being requested to conduct "scientific research" and from the documentation and the testimony given by the Navy representative who phoned into the meeting it was pretty clear that the dolphins were being brought in for training and not for anything that could be considered "scientific research" by even a lenient interpretation of that phrase.  On the other hand, in order for anything to get done in this world, and especially in the highly  bureaucratic State of Hawaii, there needs to be a certain flexibility of interpretation - if the cause is a good one, of course.  For instance, I'm delighted to bend the rules to the breaking point for a small farmer.  But using dolphins for military purposes - that is on the edge of what could be called a good cause, in my opinion, and way over the line into bad, bad, bad for quite a few people, whose testimony sat in a substantial stack at my seat when I came into the meeting.  Of course, most of the testimony was protesting using dolphins as weapons carriers, which is not what these dolphins were being trained to do.  How to weigh passionate but off-target testimony?  What weight to give my own thoughts and feelings about the use of dolphins by the military? How do the dolphins feel about their lives?

From a certain point of view I have no business even thinking about animal rights since I make a living raising animals for food and training animals to be obedient to my will. I ask my dogs and horses to put themselves in danger for me.  The dogs love it; the horses for the most part would rather be dozing under a tree somewhere but gain social status in their herd, I've noticed, that closely follows their skill in interacting with humans.

I don't think that animals have the same kind of rights that humans have among ourselves.  "Rights" are a human game, a game which involves our history of symbolic language, the invention of legal codes from Hammurabi on down.  Even among humans the language of "rights" is a fragile construction, with little pragmatic value, except in the context of specific political and economic institutions and power constellations.

But there is a morality or code of behavoir that is a logical offshoot of our evolving knowledge of ecosystems and environment.   That code of behavior can make the difference in whether we further degrade the environment until there are no more wild animals or plants left, or not.  Caring about what the military is up to with bottlenose dolphins (or sea lions or dogs or horses for that matter) is one small part of going towards the Not.

Considered pragmatically, using dolphins to detect mines seems to be of minimal risk to the dolphins and to potentially save human lives. I'm not opposed to working animals, obviously, as long as they are treated with respect.  And there was that thing where if I voted No it would look like I caved in to pressure from the animal rights groups with their stack of mostly off-base testimony.  Also maybe the Navy would be mad at the State and cut jobs at Pearl Harbor or some other unforeseen consequence of this little permit.

On the other hand there was that point of legality. And the fact that underwater mines and dolphins just don't go together. Just because.

So I voted No on the permit because I didn't think we should bend the rules for the military and their use of dolphins. And someone else on the board voted with me, but we were outvoted 5-2.  One more vote and it wouldn't have passed.  But I think that it passed is OK, for now.