Wild cetaceans face welfare challenges from human activities including noise pollution, entanglement, and ship strikes that cause significant individual suffering.
Wild cetaceans face significant welfare harms from human activities that cause individual suffering at scale. Entanglement in fishing gear is a leading cause of cetacean death and causes prolonged suffering as entangled animals struggle, develop wounds from fishing line cutting through skin and blubber, and eventually drown or starve. Acoustic trauma from naval sonar causes physical damage to cetaceans' sophisticated auditory systems, leading to disorientation, disruptive behavioral changes, and strandings that have been documented as fatal events. Ship strikes cause traumatic injury ranging from superficial wounds to fatal blunt force trauma. Plastic ingestion causes digestive blockage and starvation. These harms are largely addressable through policy changes - vessel speed restrictions in whale habitats, sonar restrictions in sensitive areas, fishing gear modifications, and plastic pollution reduction. Each policy change prevents genuine suffering in sentient animals with complex social and emotional lives.