Coronado, California, is identified as the place where most of the U.S. Navy’s marine mammals were trained. Its significance in the novel comes through Greywolf’s account of the military animal program: Coronado is a working training location within a broader system, not the system’s administrative center.

Setting and Role

Greywolf says that although the systems’ center was in San Diego, he spent most of his time in Coronado, where the majority of the animals were trained. The distinction places Coronado within a distributed operation: the center and the training grounds are not the same place, and the animals’ work depends on training conducted away from the institutional hub.

The Marine Mammal Program

The animals were cared for in what Greywolf describes as their natural habitat, in creeks and ocean pens. He says they were well fed and received excellent medical care, contrasting their treatment with that of most people. Coronado is therefore associated not only with preparing animals for military work but with the facilities and routines through which that work was sustained.

Connection to the Navy’s Systems

Greywolf’s account distinguishes the program’s operational systems from a conventional fleet. Regular systems consisted of four to eight mammals assigned to particular tasks: one dolphin-only system located mines and alerted handlers to saboteurs; another used sea lions; and two more focused on mine-hunting and guarding naval facilities against enemy divers. He clarifies that he was not simply in charge of the fifth system, MKO, which differed from the regular systems. These details give Coronado a specific place in the novel’s account of military animal training while keeping it distinct from the organization’s central command.