Commercial fishing kills trillions of wild fish annually under conditions causing significant suffering. Understanding the welfare science is the first step toward industry and consumer change.
Wild fish welfare is perhaps the most significant and most neglected animal welfare issue on the planet. Trillions of individuals die annually in conditions that, if applied to any vertebrate more culturally familiar than fish, would prompt immediate regulatory intervention. Asphyxiation in air, barotrauma from decompression, crushing in nets, and live processing all cause suffering in animals whose capacity to feel pain is now well-supported by neuroscience. The scale dwarfs farm animal welfare concerns by orders of magnitude. The practical challenge is enormous: unlike farm animals, wild fish cannot be managed in welfare-controlled environments. But industry adoption of humane stunning before processing, bycatch reduction measures, and size limits that allow fish to reach reproductive age before capture would all reduce suffering significantly.