Cetacean strandings — beachings of whales and dolphins — present acute welfare emergencies requiring rapid, skilled response. Understanding how to respond and what outcomes are realistic is essential for welfare advocates.
Cetacean strandings cause severe welfare harm: animals are dehydrated, overheating, and experiencing the compression and disorientation of terrestrial exposure. Public instinct to help by pushing stranded animals back into the sea is often counterproductive — animals strand for a reason and may beach again immediately. Professional welfare response involves stabilising the animal, assessing its condition and prognosis, and making a rapid decision about whether refloatation is appropriate or euthanasia is more humane. For mass strandings, coordinating a welfare-positive response across dozens of animals simultaneously requires trained teams and rapid logistics. Public education about not approaching stranded cetaceans independently, and how to contact specialist response teams quickly, is the most impactful public contribution to stranding welfare.