Underwater noise pollution from shipping, sonar, and industrial activities disrupts cetacean communication and causes stress, injury, and death.
Cetaceans that evolved to communicate, navigate, and hunt using sophisticated acoustic systems are increasingly degraded by an ocean environment saturated with anthropogenic noise. Chronic noise exposure causes physiological stress responses, interferes with feeding, disrupts mother-calf communication, and reduces reproductive success. Acute acoustic trauma from military sonar causes internal hemorrhage, disorientation, and death. The welfare harm of ocean noise pollution is pervasive, ongoing, and affects virtually every population of cetacean globally.