Thousands of seals, sea lions, cetaceans and other marine mammals are rehabilitated each year. Understanding what makes rehabilitation succeed or fail is crucial for welfare and conservation.
Marine mammal rehabilitation sits at the intersection of welfare and conservation. For individual animals, high-quality rehabilitation — providing appropriate nutrition, minimising human contact to preserve wild behaviour, and ensuring fitness before release — dramatically improves survival outcomes. Welfare during rehabilitation itself matters: captive marine mammals experience stress from confinement, handling, medical procedures, and social isolation. Minimising the duration of captivity while ensuring readiness for release is therefore both a welfare and conservation priority. Centres that track post-release outcomes using telemetry provide the evidence base for continuous improvement. The decision of when to attempt rehabilitation versus euthanasia requires honest assessment of likely outcomes rather than emotional pressure to attempt rescue at all costs.