Atlantic cod populations collapsed in the 1990s due to overfishing, with welfare implications for the billions of fish killed before and during the collapse and in subsequent recovery management.
The cod collapse represents a welfare catastrophe in retrospect: industrial fishing killed billions of individual fish annually, replacing a naturally structured population with a truncated age structure and ultimately a near-empty ocean. The welfare of individual cod — experiencing trawl capture, crowding, and suffocation — was never considered in fisheries management. Current recovery efforts focus on population sustainability, but incorporating welfare into fisheries management would require additional consideration of capture methods and incidental mortality.