Wild marine mammals face welfare threats from entanglement, pollution, prey depletion, and climate change that require international cooperation to address.
Wild marine mammal welfare is threatened by a combination of direct harms — entanglement, ship strikes, direct harvest — and indirect harms from habitat degradation, prey depletion, and pollution. These threats accumulate across individual lifetimes and affect reproductive success, immune function, and behavioral capacity in ways that constitute chronic welfare harms. International marine conservation agreements that address these threats simultaneously serve conservation and individual animal welfare.