Human-generated ocean noise has dramatically increased in recent decades. Its welfare and conservation impacts on marine mammals, fish and invertebrates are increasingly documented and concerning.
Ocean noise pollution is a welfare problem that operates at enormous scale but remains largely invisible to most people. Marine mammals whose entire sensory and social lives depend on acoustic signals experience profound disruption when those signals are masked or overwhelmed by human noise. Beaked whale strandings associated with military sonar represent acute welfare emergencies involving terrified, disoriented animals dying from decompression injuries caused by rapid surfacing. The chronic welfare impacts of shipping noise on all cetacean species — reduced feeding success, communication breakdown, chronic stress — accumulate across billions of animal-hours annually. Unlike many environmental problems, effective mitigation exists: quieter ships, speed reductions, and sonar operational restrictions can meaningfully reduce noise exposure without sacrificing the marine activities that generate it.