Herring are among the most harvested fish globally, with billions caught annually in pelagic trawl and purse seine fisheries that cause significant individual welfare impacts.
Herring caught in pelagic trawls and purse seines experience progressive welfare insults from net contact causing scale loss and skin abrasion, crowding as the net is pursed, barotrauma from depth change, and finally suffocation in the catch. Deaths from suffocation can take minutes. The scale of herring harvests means even small welfare improvements per individual fish would have enormous cumulative effects. Herring fisheries are also ecologically significant as keystone prey species. Rapid chilling methods can reduce time to death. The welfare of herring at the scale they are harvested remains one of the least addressed animal welfare challenges globally, with essentially no welfare standards applied in commercial fisheries for small pelagic fish.