Welcome to the Star Trek bestiary! This is where we look at creatures presented
in the shows and Trek media that do not really fit into an index and in this case,
we are looking briefly into the numerous Starfleet Cetaceans that may exist within the Federation.
Nobody remind Generation Tech about this. So the existence of Cetacean ops in Star
Trek has always been a soft canon thing, and a bit of a joke. It is brought up in beta canon
and in things like reference manuals, but never seen in the shows. However,
in background dialogue we do here references to it as well as lines concerning the ship’s dolphins,
but it was never brought to the fore. Suitable then, that this light-hearted, semi-joke gets
it’s canonising in Lower Decks at last. First up, what is “cetacean ops” even for?
Well, it is a specialised segment of a vessel designed to house aquariums for marine lifeforms
that usually only takes up one section of one deck, maybe two on a larger vessel. It even
came equipped with its own evacuation pods for the aquatic inhabitants in case of emergency.
For example, on the galaxy-class, we can see that there are eight water tanks on deck 13
that constitute this strange operations division, housing a dozen dolphins and two whales. Around
the edges of the tanks are LCARS computer displays made for their interaction, presumably they bump
the touch sensitive buttons with their noses? The responsibilities for this system and its… “crew”
was to aid in navigation of the vessel, somehow. Moving on to the actual critters of the show, the
Cetaceans themselves. So what are they? As far as we have seen, they are always aquatic mammals of
Earth that share a high degree of intelligence. So first up, there was the common bottlenose dolphin.
These dolphins vary a fair amount in size but are generally around four metres long. They
are very smart with brains larger than humans, although with grey matter, size isn’t everything,
no matter what the Talosians say. The next one, and so far the only
confirmed on-screen depiction is the Beluga Whale as seen in Star Trek Lower Decks.
On top of being of comparable intelligence to the dolphin, their melon (seriously, that is what
that bulbous head is called and that is adorable), can subtly change shape, allowing them to display
different feelings. It’s how they do facial expressions to one another and that is super cool!
They are usually around 4 and metres long. Oh and after spending time around humans, they often try
to mimic human speech, lowering their tone. I’m imagining they basically develop a “human accent”,
it’s like when you spend years away from home in another country and gain a tinge of the accent. It
even fades again with time away from humans. The final one mentioned is the Takaya Orca,
which unlike the previous two mammals, is actually made up. I know, right? Dolphins helping to fly a
spaceship is totally believable, but for an Orca, it was a step too far and they had to make one up.
In seriousness, this whale was a type of Orca, or Killer whale as they are more commonly known.
In real life there are many different types of Orca, though most look very similar
and the main differences are in behaviour, diet and size. However, all Orca are predators and
would maybe eat the dolphins, so keeping one in the same tank as the dolphins seems a like a
bit of a time bomb. Although despite the name, they are a type of dolphin too…
The smallest Orcas are around 6 metres long, although this 24th century type
maybe different and smarter than current ones, hence its inclusion in Cetacean ops.
So what about the general believability of feasibility of having dolphins and whales as part
of a Starship’s crew? Well, there are many studies that look into the sentience and sapience of many
cetaceans and the results vary with species so I’ll focus on the ones we see in the show.
Dolphins are capable of learning and innovating, problem solving and recognition.
This seems to go further than just an animal being trained to perform an action,
they actually put thought into a solution before attempting and refining their approach.
On top of this, they are social creatures that even extend this to non-cetacean creatures,
such as humans, working alongside them for food and help. Although a quick disclaimer, don’t go
trying to pet a wild dolphin, you dunno what’s going through its mind, and it may try to harm you
and then play with your corpse. These dolphins in particular have even been observed to use tools,
forming sponges into protective coatings for their snouts so they could dig with them.
The final point I’ll mention is that Dolphins do address each other using language, with specific
clicks and whistles for different individuals, so in a way, they assigned names to one another
and they can recognise themselves in a mirror. As for the Orca, well, they’re made up one so it’s
hard to judge. Honestly, I’m more concerned by the fact that Orca do not like to be in captivity
as they have the urge to travel up to 40 miles a day and dive 100 feet at a whim.
There is simply not enough room on a Starship for this kind of behaviour
and it’s not like they can pop to the holodeck at the end of a shift for a quick splash around.
Although transporters to exist… huh… so maybe then. My point is that the intelligence required
from such a creature would have to be truly comparable sentience to a human. The ability to
acknowledge and choose that they are effectively “at work”, and understand that the limited space
they have at their disposal is only temporary. All of these studies tend to attempt to quantify
the same sort of thing, intelligence and that is surprisingly difficult, because
you are in effect attempting to distinguish between behaviour through learning,
and that extra step of understanding. Sufficed to say, although cetaceans are really rather clever,
it’s not like they can do complex mathematics and the calculations required for astronavigation.
So in Star Trek, these cetaceans have either undergone an evolutionary jump in intelligence,
or there is some genetic tampering in the Trek past that we don’t know about.
Alternatively, these creatures might not be quite at the level of a human when it comes to
plotting courses in space, but have some other natural aptitude for it that Starfleet has
learned to harness, bringing them on board vessel to serve in that capacity in much the same way as
the military currently trains Dolphins to help out with underwater operations. The simplest
answer is that dolphins and whales are indeed very intelligent but they are great at being dolphins
and whales and not humans. So any integration into a Starship would have to cater specifically to
their way of thinking and approach to everything. So yeah. That is everything I know about Cetacean
ops in Star Trek and some interesting factoids about those who have been seen to man those
stations. Well, not man them… you know what I mean. Thanks for watching this Bestiary
and I hope I could entertain, until the next one thanks again and goodbye!