Evidence-based guidelines for dolphin watching tourism and the welfare impacts of poorly regulated human-dolphin interactions.
Dolphin watching tourism at its best provides both economic incentives for dolphin protection and genuine human connection to wild animals. At its worst, it constitutes chronic harassment of wild animals who cannot escape concentrated human pressure during activities they need to perform for survival. The welfare stakes are real: dolphins forced to alter their behavioral budgets through human disturbance may show population-level consequences through reduced reproductive success and increased stress-related immune suppression. The solution is not ending dolphin tourism — which would eliminate its conservation value — but regulating it with evidence-based guidelines that treat dolphin behavioral needs as non-negotiable.