Flipper To The Rescue

By Allen Bacon, The Daily Bosco

When I was a kid one of my favorite television shows was Flipper.

Every Saturday night my brother and I would gather around our TV with some half burnt Jiffy Pop and watch the adventures of Flipper.

Flipper was like Lassie except he wasn't a dog and he didn't have to fetch Timmy out of the well every week.

Flipper was a dolphin who always seemed to have this perpetual grin on his face. Not like a happy grin...it was more like a sarcastic "I'm more smarter and developed than you humans" grin.

And Flipper was always into way more cool stuff than Lassie. Like thwarting drug or gun running smugglers off the Florida keys and he would always wear these pink and teal clothes. Oh wait, that was the other show from Florida..Miami Vice.

I was thinking about Flipper this weekend because I was reading this old story about thousands of dolphins blocking suspected Somali pirate ships when they were trying to attack Chinese merchant ships passing the Gulf of Aden a few years back.

The Chinese merchant ships escorted by a China's fleet sailed on the Gulf of Aden when they met some suspected pirate ships. Thousands of dolphins suddenly leaped out of the water between pirates and merchants when the pirate ships headed for the China boats.

The suspected pirates ships stopped and then turned away. They had no choice. The spectacular scene continued for a while.

China initiated its three-ship escort task force after the United Nations Security Council called on countries to patrol gulf and waters off Somalia, one of the world's busiest marine routes, where surging piracy endangered intercontinental shipping.

China's first fleet has escorted 206 vessels, including 29 foreign merchant vessels, and successfully rescued three foreign merchant ships from pirate attacks. About 20 percent of Chinese merchant ships passing through the waters off Somalia were attacked by pirates from January to November in 2008, before the task force was deployed. A total of seven ships, either owned by China or carrying Chinese cargo and crew, were hijacked.

Of course, this whole incident with the dolphins got my wheels to turning. You just know that some Hollywood executive is pitching a new Flipper movie this morning about the dolphin and his friends standing down a crew of Somalia Pirates lead by Johnny Depp.

Or better yet somebody at the Defense Department is putting together a team of dolphins to run interference for our cargo ships...It could happen.