Assailed Navy Project : Dolphin Trainer Not Fired for Remarks

Officials of the San Diego company that trains dolphins and sea lions for the Navy said Wednesday that a Navy spokesman was wrong when he announced that the company, Science Applications International Corp., had fired a trainer who publicly criticized the program.

A spokesman for the Naval Ocean Systems Center said two weeks ago that SAI had fired trainer Rick Trout for speaking to reporters about alleged mismanagement and animal abuse in the Navy’s marine mammal program.

However, Chuck Nichols, SAI’s senior vice president for media relations, said Wednesday that Trout, who is on medical leave, has not been fired. Trout’s public statements are being reviewed by Navy investigators, who are attempting to determine whether he disclosed any classified information, Nichols said. SAI is conducting an internal investigation of Trout’s allegations to determine whether they are true, he added.

Tom LaPuzza, a spokesman for the Naval Ocean Systems Center on Point Loma, said Wednesday that SAI officials informed the center several weeks ago that Trout had been fired for violating the terms of his employment, which include that he refrain from speaking to the press about his work. However, SAI later informed the Navy that Trout had not been fired, LaPuzza said.

‘Plagued by Ineptitude’

Trout said this week that he does not believe he has disclosed any classified information and that he plans to cooperate with the internal SAI investigation of the training program. He said he was never notified by SAI that he had been fired, but recently received a telegram informing him that reports that he had been fired were not true.

Trout has charged that the dolphin-training program is plagued by ineptitude, cost overruns, high turnover among employees and numerous extensions. The Navy began training 11 dolphins for the program in San Diego in 1984, but only six remain, he said, adding that the training was to have been completed in two years. Some swam away and others died, and none of the remaining dolphins is ready to perform the tasks required by the Navy, he said.

At times, Trout said, if the dolphins did not perform properly, their food was thrown out of their reach into a nearby pen or fed to birds.

Trout works for SAI’s Seaco division, which has had a contract with the Navy for several years to train dolphins and sea lions for warfare-related tasks. SAI purchased Seaco, a San Diego firm, in January.