New Arms Exports to Iran: Dolphins

What export-import goods come to mind when you think of Iran? Oil, caviar, nuclear warheads, chemical weapons - nothing new.


But earlier this year, the familiar list was supplemented by an unexpected addition: marine mammals.


As director of the Akvamarin aquarium in Sevastopol, marine biologist Boris Zhurid constantly struggled to scrape up the $120 a month needed to feed each of his 27 dolphins, sea lions, white whales and seals. But Zhurid was spared the inevitable frustration of seeking sponsors close to home: Last month, he and his slippery beloveds packed up their minnows and jumped a cargo plane to Iran after receiving an unexpected business proposal from a local tourism magnate.


"In Sevastopol, we had an emergency situation. We had food shortages, and I couldn't stay and watch my animals starving," Zhurid said in a telephone interview from his new-found paradise - the Sabet Environmental and Ecological Center on Kish Island, off the coast of Iran.


Zhurid, once a top Soviet specialist in dolphin training, began working with so-called "military" dolphins and white whales during the Cold War era.


The use of dolphins for military purposes, such as planting explosive devices on enemy ships and searching for mines or lost objects at sea, was pioneered by the U.S. Navy in 1964; two years later, the Soviet Union followed suit, and soon established its first dolphin training center in Kazachya Bay near the Ukrainian city of Sevastopol.


Together with his wife, Svetlana Verizhnikova, Zhurid set up the second dolphintraining center - under the navy's jurisdiction - in Primorsky region in the Far East in 1983. There he conducted myriad research programs with dolphins. Once, he even sent a dolphin parachuting from a helicopter - and jumped after the airborne creature himself - as part of an experiment on using the animals as lifeguards.


After his 20-some years with the military, Zhurid came to head up the Sevastopol dolphinarium, a private enterprise that he struggled to keep afloat for nearly a decade.


The invitation from the Kish Island center proved to be his lifesaver. There, owner and local tycoon Hossein Sabet is finishing construction of Underwater World, an aqua-park worth approximately $2 million, which is intended to serve as a tourist attraction and scientific research center.


"Our program is based upon ecological and scientific research," Zhurid said about the center, which is the fruit of cooperation between Sabet's Stella Kish Company and the Ukrainian Akvamarin dolphinarium. He added that plans are in the works to rent a ship from the Ukrainian government for scientific research .


Despite his former involvement with the Soviet navy, Zhurid stressed that his research on Kish would have no connection with the military.


"Not by a long shot," Zhurid said, though he admitted that one of his white whales - appropriately named White - was previously involved in military programs.


Yury Starodubtsev, a senior scientist at Moscow State University's biology department who, together with Zhurid, started the dolphin training experiments in Kazachya Bay, described Zhurid as a talented scientist and "a big animal lover."


Starodubtsev said that, as far as he knows, "no dolphins were used in military operations in the U.S.S.R." He did say, however, that dolphins that were trained to find lost objects in the sea did help locate lost military and scientific equipment, including three military torpedoes worth $250,000 in 1985.


Zhurid brought over 20 marine mammals to the island, which the center's Iranian staff hope will attract tourists.


"It is the first time in the history of Iran that our people will have a chance to look at dolphins," said Ali Houshmand, general director of the Kish aquarium and the president of the Kish Island center.


According to Houshmand, the animals will also be used to study environmental conditions in the Persian Gulf, which was severely damaged during the 1991 Gulf War. The aquarium is slated for completion in a few months, just in time for a tentatively planned visit by Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, Houshmand said.


About 43 bottlenose dolphins employed by the Soviet military were exported to foreign aquariums between 1990 and 1997, according to a study published in 1998 by the British-based Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. Turkey, Argentina, Israel and Cyprus were among the countries that purchased dolphins for their local aquariums. Of those, 20 dolphins have died from lack of proper care and nine have been returned to Russia, the report said.


Zhurid, who has written eight books about marine life, is absolutely sure his animals will never meet such a fate. "Dolphins are like pets for me," he said.


He is now busy helping workers at the construction site and learning Persian to better understand "the Iranian mentality," he said. But despite the haven his new home has offered him, he remains nostalgic about his military days.


"I am a typical sovok [Soviet man], and I was once proud to live in an empire, like every military man is," he said.