Wild Atlantic salmon populations have declined catastrophically. The welfare of individual wild salmon and the population-level impacts of fishing require consideration.
Wild salmon face welfare challenges from fishing, disease, and habitat degradation that affect millions of individual fish. Catch-and-release fishing causes physiological stress and some proportion of delayed mortality even with best-practice handling. Population collapse means individual fish face compounded threats throughout their migration. Conservation measures including reduced marine fishing quotas, river habitat restoration, and sea lice regulation on fish farms address welfare at both individual and population scale.