Sperm whales have the largest brain of any animal and are highly acoustic - making them particularly vulnerable to the noise pollution increasingly affecting ocean environments.
Sperm whale welfare is profoundly affected by ocean noise pollution. As highly acoustic animals, masking of their communication and echolocation by shipping noise represents a chronic welfare harm at scale. Military sonar incidents appear to cause acute disorientation sufficient to drive whales into unusual behaviour patterns culminating in strandings. Strandings from sonar events involve animals that are disoriented, potentially bleeding from pressure trauma, and dying in an alien environment. The welfare of individual sperm whales in a noisy ocean is compromised in ways that are difficult to directly observe but well-evidenced from stranding studies.