The welfare dimensions of wild salmon capture in commercial and recreational fisheries, including hooking, handling, and catch-and-release practices.
Wild salmon welfare in fisheries involves welfare considerations that are rarely part of the public conversation about salmon sustainability. Drowning in gill nets is a welfare event — not an instantaneous death but a progressive hypoxic stress. Catch-and-release, practiced as a conservation tool, causes physiological stress and post-release mortality at rates that vary with conditions and handling. Neither of these considerations argues for eliminating wild salmon fisheries, but they do argue for minimizing unnecessary suffering within those fisheries through gear modifications that reduce entanglement suffering, mandatory temperature restrictions on catch-and-release fishing, and training programs for anglers in minimal-stress handling techniques.