Atlantic salmon face welfare threats throughout their extraordinary migrations between freshwater spawning grounds and oceanic feeding areas.
Wild salmon experience acute welfare challenges during upstream migration including exhaustion from negotiating impassable weirs, thermal stress in warm river stretches, sea lice loading near fish farms, and physical injury from catch-and-release angling. Fish that cannot pass obstructions may exhaust themselves attempting impassable barriers, dying without spawning. Climate change is warming rivers to temperatures at which salmon cannot sustain aerobic exercise, forcing fish to hold in suboptimal locations or triggering premature death. Each individual salmon that fails to complete its lifecycle represents both a conservation and welfare loss.