The Baltic Sea hosts distinctive wildlife including grey seals, harbour porpoises, and migratory fish under extreme pressure from pollution, eutrophication, fishing, and climate change.
Baltic Sea wildlife faces a compound welfare crisis. Grey seals experience high contaminant loads accumulated through the food chain, with PCBs causing reproductive failure and immune suppression. The critically endangered Baltic harbour porpoise suffers from gillnet bycatch, noise pollution from shipping and military activity, and food limitation. Fish populations face the dual stress of altered thermal regimes and spawning habitat degradation. Dead zone events cause mass mortality of bottom-dwelling invertebrates and fish, representing a large-scale acute welfare event that occurs regularly. The interconnected nature of these pressures means single-species conservation approaches are insufficient without whole-ecosystem management.