Sustainable fishing certification schemes focus primarily on population-level conservation, but emerging welfare criteria are beginning to address how fish are killed and the suffering associated with capture.
The welfare of wild-caught fish has been almost entirely overlooked in sustainability frameworks that have focused on population-level conservation. A stock can be sustainable while involving extraordinary suffering in every individual fish caught. Suffocation, crushing in nets, pressure barotrauma from depth changes, and hours dying on deck or in ice are routine aspects of commercial fishing that would be regulated if applied to land animals. Developing fish welfare criteria within or alongside sustainability certification is an important next step that several organizations are beginning to pursue.