Pain management in fish is an emerging area of veterinary medicine with evidence that analgesics reduce pain responses in ways consistent with subjective experience.
The evidence that analgesics reduce pain-consistent behaviours in fish supports the inference that they experience pain and that management is beneficial. Fish that receive pain relief after procedures recover normal feeding and social behaviour more rapidly than controls. The challenge is that most fish — particularly farmed fish — never receive veterinary attention, and the concept of fish pain management has not penetrated commercial production contexts. Veterinary fish pain management is primarily relevant to companion and research fish.