Explores how sea lions help the Navy, discusses why they are used to retrieve military equipment from the ocean, and describes their training.

Project Quick Find is the true story of sea lions trained to help U.S. Navy SEALs. Begun in Hawaii in the late 1960s, the project recruited trainers in Coronado, California, to successfully teach the animals to recover objects from the ocean floor. The program eventually received official navy certification, expanded its scope and evolved its mission. Author, photojournalist and former Navy SEAL Michael P. Wood documented the program in the 1970s and presents this fascinating look at the bond between man and beast.

Comprehensive manual for understanding and carrying out marine mammal rescue activities for stranded seals, manatees, dolphins, whales, or sea otters.

A fascinating naval perspective on one of the greatest of all historical conundrums: How did thirteen isolated colonies, which in 1775 began a war with Britain without a navy or an army, win their independence from the greatest naval and military power on earth? The American Revolution involved a naval war of immense scope and variety, including no fewer than twenty-two navies fighting on five oceans—to say nothing of rivers and lakes. In no other war were so many large-scale fleet battles fought, one of which was the most strategically significant naval battle in all of British, French, and American history. Simultaneous naval campaigns were fought in the English Channel, the North and Mid-Atlantic, the Mediterranean, off South Africa, in the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, the Pacific, the North Sea and, of course, off the eastern seaboard of America. Not until the Second World War would any nation actively fight in so many different theaters. In The Struggle for Sea Power, Sam Willis traces every key military event in the path to American independence from a naval perspective, and he also brings this important viewpoint to bear on economic, political, and social developments that were fundamental to the success of the Revolution. In doing so Willis offers valuable new insights into American, British, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Russian history. This unique account of the American Revolution gives us a new understanding of the influence of sea power upon history, of the American path to independence, and of the rise and fall of the British Empire.

In this memorable first book, Behind the Dolphin Smile, Richard O'Barry told the inspiring story of his personal transformation from world-famous dolphin trainer (Flipper was his pupil) to dolphin liberator. Now, in To Free a Dolphin, he passionately recounts the dramatic story of his heart-breaking campaign to release captive dolphins back into the wild. With wit and insight he chronicles the extreme opposition he has faced from bureaucrats, major players in the captive-dolphin industry, rival wildlife groups, and well-meaning sentimentalists. He introduces readers to famous show animals he has helped, including Bogie and Bacall of Key Largo. And, most fascinating, he describes his struggles to deprogram and rehabilitate dolphins emotionally scarred from years of captivity--struggles that become battles for the animals' souls.

From the Galapagos to the depths of Patagonia and up along the stark desert coast of Chile, Listening to Sea Lions’ empathic ethnography carries the reader directly into the heart of the ocean world of Latino coastal people. Sea lions are the fellow denizens in nature who share the perpetual changes and are seen as metaphoric selves. Meltzoff uses storytelling rather than explicit theory to help explain local struggles and survival strategies wrought by extreme El Niño events and shifting political climates. Embedded within the six multi-sited ethnographies are global themes in coastal communities, from boom-and-bust fisheries to the rivalries among fisheries, tourism, conservation interests. The overall picture is sea-change and impermanence as a local way of life by the ocean.

Based on a real military program! The US Navy's new breed of soldier is ready to make a big splash. An action-packed, maritime military adventure from the author of Dog Tags.A notorious Somalian pirate sails the Arabian Sea, leading a band of deadly thieves and mercenaries on an international crime spree. When they take American hostages aboard a cargo ship, they've finally gone too far -- and a special task force of Navy SEALs and Marines is called in to help. SEALs, Marines . . . and a talented sea lion named Sly.As Sly's handler, young sailor Felix has two important jobs. Job one is to get Sly to plant a beacon so that the U.S. strike force can follow the pirates back to their haven. Job two is to keep the sea lion safe and out of combat. But when the mission goes wrong and the pirates get the upper hand, Felix and Sly end up right in the middle of the action . . . with dozens of innocent lives at stake.

Winner of the 2015 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award: “Horwitz’s dogged reporting…combined with crisp, cinematic writing, produces a powerful narrative…. He has written a book that is instructive and passionate and deserving a wide audience” (PEN Award Citation). Six years in the making, War of the Whales is the “gripping detective tale” (Publishers Weekly) of a crusading attorney, Joel Reynolds, who stumbles on one of the US Navy’s best-kept secrets: a submarine detection system that floods entire ocean basins with high-intensity sound—and drives whales onto beaches. As Joel Reynolds launches a legal fight to expose and challenge the Navy program, marine biologist Ken Balcomb witnesses a mysterious mass stranding of whales near his research station in the Bahamas. Investigating this calamity, Balcomb is forced to choose between his conscience and an oath of secrecy he swore to the Navy in his youth. “War of the Whales reads like the best investigative journalism, with cinematic scenes of strandings and dramatic David-and-Goliath courtroom dramas as activists diligently hold the Navy accountable” (The Huffington Post). When Balcomb and Reynolds team up to expose the truth behind an epidemic of mass strandings, the stage is set for an epic battle that pits admirals against activists, rogue submarines against weaponized dolphins, and national security against the need to safeguard the ocean environment. “Strong and valuable” (The Washington Post), “brilliantly told” (Bob Woodward), author Joshua Horwitz combines the best of legal drama, natural history, and military intrigue to “raise serious questions about the unchecked use of secrecy by the military to advance its institutional power” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).