Dolphins face welfare threats from captivity, tourism interactions, bycatch, and pollution. Their remarkable intelligence makes these threats particularly significant.
Dolphin welfare encompasses both individual animals in captive facilities and the hundreds of thousands killed annually as bycatch. Captive dolphins, whose cognitive sophistication rivals that of great apes, face the profound welfare constraint of limited space, restricted social relationships, and enforced performance. Public opinion against captive dolphin facilities has driven closure of many operations globally. Wild dolphin welfare is threatened at scale by fishing-related mortality — bycatch deaths prevent dolphins from living out their full social and cognitive lives. Swim-with-dolphin tourism, while less severe than captivity, causes measurable welfare impacts when it disrupts key behaviours. Evidence-based assessment of dolphin welfare considers both individual experience and the broader context of population-level human-caused mortality.