Cold-water commercial fisheries for cod, haddock, pollock, and herring affect billions of fish annually, with welfare conditions during capture and killing rarely addressed.
Cold-water fishery welfare receives less attention than aquaculture welfare because it involves wild animals and occurs at sea without public visibility. Fish caught in trawl nets experience the pressure and abrasion of being compressed with millions of other fish over hours-long tows. Removal from water and slaughter by suffocation or live evisceration causes suffering whose intensity is contested but whose duration is clear. Improved slaughter methods for commercial fisheries are available but adoption requires regulatory pressure or market incentives.