Rescuing and rehabilitating stranded or injured marine mammals is welfare-positive when done well, but raises complex questions about outcomes, resources, and release success.
Marine mammal rehabilitation delivers genuine welfare benefit for individual animals and provides important scientific and public education value. However, honest assessment of outcomes is essential: rehabilitation is not always in an individual animal's welfare interest, and triage decisions about which animals to treat must weigh prognosis, resource cost, and stress of captive care against the likely benefit. The goal of rehabilitation is always release to a life of normal welfare in the wild — animals assessed as unable to survive in the wild, or so habituated to humans that reintegration is impossible, present difficult decisions about long-term captive placement or euthanasia. Welfare-conscious rehabilitation programmes establish clear triage criteria and monitor post-release survival to evaluate and improve outcomes.