The blue economy encompasses all ocean-based economic activities. Its rapid growth threatens marine animal welfare through habitat destruction, pollution, and overexploitation.
Marine animal welfare in the blue economy context requires thinking about entire ecosystems as welfare contexts. Cetaceans that lose communication range due to ship noise experience impaired social bonding and reduced foraging efficiency. Seabirds that lose foraging habitat to offshore wind construction face nutritional stress. Deep-sea species disturbed by mining lose the stable, ancient habitat conditions to which they are exquisitely adapted. The welfare approach to the blue economy is not opposition to all development but insistence on genuine environmental and welfare impact assessment, meaningful MPA establishment and enforcement, and recognition that the ocean welfare system includes billions of sentient animals whose interests must be weighed.