Wild orca populations including the critically endangered Southern Resident killer whales face starvation, pollution, and acoustic disturbance that compromise individual welfare.
Wild orca welfare is intimately connected to the health of their food web and acoustic environment. Salmon-dependent orca populations experiencing food shortages show signs of chronic malnutrition - mothers lose weight nursing calves, and calves do not survive infancy at replacement rates. Vessel noise directly impairs the echolocation-based hunting behaviour on which they depend. These are welfare harms playing out at population scale in real time.