Scientific understanding of fish cognition has advanced dramatically in recent years, revealing capacities for learning, memory, social behavior, and pain that demand a fundamental reassessment of how we treat fish.
The traditional view of fish as simple, stimulus-response machines has been overturned by decades of research. Fish are cognitively sophisticated animals with the neurological infrastructure for pain and likely forms of subjective experience. This has profound welfare implications: the billions of fish killed annually by commercial fishing, aquaculture, and recreational angling likely experience significant suffering. Catch-and-release fishing causes demonstrable physiological stress. Slaughter without stunning causes prolonged death. Our treatment of fish is premised on an outdated understanding of their minds - updating our practices to reflect current science is an urgent welfare priority.