Spotted dolphins are wide-ranging pelagic cetaceans whose welfare is affected by bycatch, pollution, climate change, and tourism interactions across tropical oceans.
Spotted dolphin welfare improved dramatically following the dolphin-safe tuna campaign demonstrating how consumer pressure can generate rapid welfare improvements at scale. Remaining welfare threats include entanglement in other fisheries, pollution, acoustic disturbance from shipping and sonar, and climate change altering prey distribution. Swim-with-dolphin tourism creates welfare concerns when unregulated interactions disturb natural behavior and social structure. The long-term Bahamas research provides welfare baseline data showing what undisturbed dolphin social lives look like.