US NAVY DESTROYS ZANZIBAR TOURIST INDUSTRY

Or so the Sydney Morning Herald would like you to think:

Hundreds of dead dolphins have been washed up along the shore of a popular tourist destination on Zanzibar's northern coast, and scientists have ruled out poisoning.

It was not immediately clear what killed the 400 dolphins, whose carcasses were strewn along a four-kilometre stretch of Nungwi, said Narriman Jidawi, a marine biologist at the Institute of Marine Science in Zanzibar.

In the United States, experts were investigating the possibility that sonar from US submarines could have been responsible for a similar incident in Marathon, Florida, where 68 deep-water dolphins stranded themselves in March last year.

A US Navy taskforce patrols the East Africa coast as part of counter-terrorism operations.
The deaths are a blow to tourism in Zanzibar, where thousands of visitors go to watch and swim with dolphins.

Gee, it's no wonder lefties prefer good old dolphin-friendly al Qaeda to the US anti-terror effort. By the way, the whole sonar-kills-cetaceans thing is iffy.

Update: Reader fm advises, via submarine blog Make Your Depth, that the task force in question is CTF 150. CTF 150 isn't a US naval group, it's multinational:

American, French, German, British, Dutch, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, Spanish, Italian, Turkish and Portuguese ships have participated in the force. Japan has provided logistical support to the effort.

The task force, currently made up of naval forces from France, Germany, Italy, Pakistan, the UK and the US, is commanded by Pakistani Rear Adm. Shahid Iqbal, who replaced Royal Netherlands Navy Commodore Hank Ort. So, if the dolphins were indeed killed by sonar it was a group effort.