Sperm whales use complex vocal communication and echolocation in deep ocean environments increasingly contaminated by anthropogenic noise, with welfare implications for their social lives and foraging.
Sperm whale welfare is inseparable from ocean acoustic quality. These animals have evolved complex social and foraging behaviors mediated entirely by sound in the deep ocean. Acoustic pollution from shipping and military sonar disrupts communication, foraging, and navigation. Sonar-related strandings cause death by decompression injury in animals that surface rapidly in panicked response to overwhelming noise. Individual sperm whales that strand alive experience extreme physiological distress before death. Reducing ship speeds in whale habitat (which also reduces noise), and regulating military sonar exercises in biologically significant areas, are the most direct welfare interventions available.