Humpback whale population recovery from commercial whaling demonstrates successful conservation, but recovered populations now face new welfare threats from entanglement, vessel strike, and ocean noise.
Humpback whale recovery is a conservation success that creates new welfare responsibilities. Entanglement causes prolonged suffering - humpbacks can drag gear for weeks or months before dying from exhaustion, starvation, or wound infection. Disentanglement teams have saved individual whales but cannot address the scale of entanglement events. Welfare improvement requires fishing gear modification, vessel speed reductions in critical habitats, and acoustic impact minimisation.