Greenland halibut or turbot is a deep-water flatfish targeted in North Atlantic fisheries with welfare considerations for capture, handling, and bycatch impacts.
Greenland halibut welfare during capture involves the same barotrauma concerns as other deep-water species, with rapid pressure reduction during hauling causing physical damage. Trawl capture involves prolonged crowding in the net before hauling that may cause oxygen depletion and crowding stress. Gillnet capture results in protracted entanglement that causes struggling and stress before death. Handling and killing on deck after hauling varies in humaneness across fishing vessels. The welfare of bycatch species including sensitive deep-water sharks and rays caught incidentally with Greenland halibut adds a further welfare dimension to these fisheries. Developing welfare guidelines for deep-water flatfish fisheries would extend welfare thinking beyond farmed species to the much larger wild catch sector.