Wild salmon face welfare harms from both commercial fishing and hatchery programs that supplement wild populations, with different welfare profiles from natural populations.
Wild salmon welfare involves both the welfare of individuals in hatchery systems and those in commercial fisheries. Hatchery crowding causes chronic welfare deficits across millions of fish. Commercial fishing methods cause acute suffering in individual fish. The natural post-spawning death of wild salmon is a physiologically programmed process distinct from the prolonged suffering of hatchery disease or fishery capture.