Joe Johannes has a job delivering SEALs. However, his SEALs have very little to do with the cute furry marine animals that you'd expect to be reading about in an environmental column.

The kind of seals that Johannes delivers are not baby seals, they're Navy SEALs. And the delivery he is involved with has nothing to do with obstetrics, but it does have something to do with recycling.

Navy SEALs, by the way, are the Special Forces personnel who get the name SEAL because they operate on the SEa Air and Land. They're experts in both scuba diving and parachuting, and a prime use for them is hostage rescue.

As the Commanding Officer of a nuclear submarine, Johannes specializes in the covert delivery of SEALs into hostile environments. The submarine that he commands, USS JAMES K. POLK, is actually a recycled submarine, one whose mission today is vastly different from what it once was.

When the POLK's keel was first laid in 1963, the Cold War was at its height. The sub carried, and was prepared to launch, 16 Polaris missiles. The launching tubes housed inside POLK's 425 foot hull could release thermonuclear missiles capable of wreaking more destruction than all the bombs of World War II.

By 1994, however, the Cold War had ended, and the POLK was converted to a different kind of use. It took 19 months to do it, but the intercontinental ballistic missiles were removed, and today the submarine is equipped to deliver and recover Navy SEALs.

The POLK can glide close to a target coast line and then, while still under water, deliver the SEALs in the middle of the night without coming to the surface. A mission of this sort cannot be detected by radar or virtually any other means.

The SEALs use night vision equipment and camouflage. In fact, as Commander Johannes likes to point out, "No one has ever detected our SEALs. They get in quick and they get out quick." A helicopter rescue mission could never be as quiet or as difficult to detect.

The world of the submarine is interesting from an environmental point of view. The POLK is a self-contained world. The ship can operate completely independently of the earth's atmosphere for months at a time. It manufactures all the purified water and all the oxygen that it needs from the surrounding sea water.

"The length of time a submarine can stay submerged," explains Johannes, " is limited primarily by the amount of food the ship can carry for the crew."

The world of the submarine also tells us something about what mankind can endure. If you were to travel aboard the POLK, one of the aspects that might strike you most is that massive numbers of people are living together in almost unbelievably confined quarters.

In the case of the POLK, 150 men live and work for months at a time in an area roughly one- fourth the size of a football field. In addition to the 150 submariners, there can be as many as 50 Navy SEALs waiting to be delivered to a covert destination. Knowing the crowded conditions, it's surprising to learn that every man aboard volunteered for the mission.

The POLK's mission today is far less menacing than the one it had when the Cold War was still going on. Recycling the POLK for use as a "SEAL bus" is a dramatic peace dividend.