Anthropogenic noise from military sonar, shipping and construction causes welfare impacts in marine mammals through acute disturbance, chronic stress and fatal strandings.
Marine mammal acoustic welfare is a chronic and acute problem that intersects with human industrial activities across all ocean environments. Chronic shipping noise forces cetaceans to call louder, change frequency or reduce communication - increasing energy expenditure and potentially disrupting social bonds and foraging coordination. Acute sonar events cause startle responses, panic, rapid surfacing and lethal gas embolism in beaked whales. Both represent genuine welfare costs across millions of individual animals. The solutions are available - quieter ship design, sonar protocols that monitor for cetacean presence, seismic survey mitigation zones, and protected areas with shipping restrictions - but require regulatory willingness to balance commercial interests against wildlife welfare.