Anthropogenic noise pollution in marine environments causes welfare harm to cetaceans, fish, and invertebrates through physiological stress, hearing damage, and communication disruption.
Marine noise pollution welfare effects operate at multiple timescales. Acute noise events — military sonar, seismic airgun surveys — can cause immediate physical hearing damage, disorientation, and mass strandings in cetaceans. Chronic noise from shipping creates continuous acoustic masking that interferes with cetacean communication, feeding acoustics, and navigation. For echolocating odontocetes, acoustic masking disrupts their primary sensory system for finding food and social coordination. Fish communication and navigation systems are also compromised. The cumulative welfare costs of anthropogenic marine noise on marine animal populations are substantial, affecting billions of individual animals in all ocean basins.