Wildlife tourism centered on cetaceans provides significant conservation funding but can cause welfare harm when operators fail to follow evidence-based guidelines.
Whale watching represents an important conservation success — it creates economic value from living cetaceans and builds public support for marine mammal protection. But the welfare evidence reveals real costs when tourism pressure is poorly managed. Cetaceans change their behavior in response to boat presence in ways that affect fitness outcomes: altered dive profiles, reduced feeding efficiency, and disrupted social interactions all carry real welfare costs for individual animals. Well-regulated whale watching with meaningful approach distance enforcement, speed limits near whales, and limitation on the number of simultaneous vessels can preserve the tourism value while dramatically reducing welfare impact. The key is genuine enforcement of guidelines rather than aspirational codes that operators can ignore.