Fish
What Everyone Should Know About Fishing and Aquaculture
Why We Need to Talk About Fish
Billions of fish and other sea creatures are killed every year for food. Even though these animals have nervous systems similar to ours and can feel pain, they’re usually slaughtered without regard for their capacity to suffer. As a result, fish suffer terribly in nets, at the end of hooks, and on fishing boats’ decks, where they slowly choke or are cut open while still conscious.
Human appetite for fish and seafood also takes a massive toll on the environment. Fishing vessels devastate the oceans, leaving them empty, lifeless, and on the brink of ecological collapse.
Fish Have Feelings
Fish often get misunderstood because they look different from us, with scales instead of skin and gills instead of lungs. But we share many traits with these underwater animals—they often live in complex social groups, have distinct personalities, can learn and remember, develop deep bonds, and feel pain and fear when injured. They show affection by rubbing against each other and communicate through a range of low-frequency sounds.
Leading scientists agree that fish feel pain. As biologist Victoria Braithwaite writes, "there is as much evidence that fish feel pain and suffer as there is for birds and mammals" — a conclusion hardly surprising to anyone who has seen a fish struggle desperately for its life when pulled from water.
A Horrible Death
Fishermen dump caught fish onto ice piles on deck, where they slowly suffocate, freeze, or get crushed to death—a cruel and prolonged way for these cold-blooded creatures to die. Researchers estimate it can take up to 15 minutes before fish lose consciousness. Others have their gills cut or their throats and bellies slit alive on blood-soaked decks.
Fish pulled from deep water often suffer rapid decompression, which can burst swim bladders, explode eyes, or force organs out through their mouths. And in catch-and-release fishing, up to 43% of fish don’t survive the trauma of being hooked and dragged from their natural environment.
More Fish in the Sea?
Humans removing billions of fish from the oceans has drastically reduced fish populations, with many species nearing extinction. Commercial fishing vessels cause immense damage to marine habitats. Massive trawlers with nets the size of football fields destroy coral reefs and sea plants on the ocean floor, swallowing everything in their path, including sea urchins, dolphins, crabs, turtles, and seals. Longline fishing hauls in lines up to 75 miles long, packed with deadly hooks. Huge drift nets hang invisibly in the water like a “wall of death,” trapping all swimming creatures that enter.
Factory Farming
Many fish eaten in Denmark come from farms, where, like all factory-farmed animals, they face intense confinement, filthy conditions, mistreatment, and high disease and parasite rates, such as sea lice. Fish are kept in underwater cages, never free to swim or follow natural instincts like salmon’s strong urge to migrate upstream annually. They may be killed by being beaten with clubs (called a priest) or having their gills cut without anesthesia. However, this is an inefficient way to kill many fish, and some survive if the electric bath fails to hit all the confined fish.
Fish farmers add chemicals and antibiotics to feed to counteract the harmful effects of overcrowding and to unnaturally speed growth. These substances harm the fish, consumers, and the local environment by polluting the water. Fish farming is also unsustainable: for example, raising one farmed salmon requires about three times its weight in wild fish as feed.
Recreational Fishing Is Not a Harmless Hobby
Recreational fishing is often portrayed as a peaceful pastime—but for the fish caught, it’s anything but peaceful. When a fish bites a hook, the sharp metal often pierces lips, throats, and internal organs, causing pain, stress, and panic. Studies show fish have nervous systems and brains that allow them to feel pain and react physiologically to stress, just like mammals.
Many fish are released back into the water, but that doesn’t guarantee survival. Hook injuries, loss of protective slime, and handling outside water can cause deadly infections, internal bleeding, or suffocation. The practice known as "catch and release" is framed as animal welfare, but for the fish, it is a violent and often fatal experience.
Fish are sentient beings with the right to live free from needless pain and death—even when it comes to human entertainment.
Crustaceans
Lobsters and crabs used for food often suffer one of the most brutal fates an animal can endure—being boiled alive. Being thrown into a pot of boiling water while fully conscious causes intense pain, and they show this by clawing frantically at the pot’s sides for up to a minute before dying in terror.
Some chefs also butcher them without pain relief. Before killing, naturally solitary lobsters are stacked atop one another in small tanks. Their claws are tied to prevent them from tearing each other apart, while they are driven mad by intense, unnatural confinement.
Dangerous Fish?
Fish often live in water so polluted no one would drink it. Their bodies absorb a toxic mix of bacteria, pollutants, and heavy metals—which then pass to all who eat them. Fish, shellfish, and tuna can contain high mercury levels from industrial pollution, sometimes causing mercury poisoning in people. Symptoms include hair loss, cognitive decline, and higher heart disease risk.
As for the claimed health benefits of essential omega-3 fatty acids, it’s entirely possible to get plenty from plant sources. Walnuts, flaxseeds, soybeans, and cauliflower all provide these vital nutrients without toxic chemicals or cruelty.
What You Can Do
It’s simple—you can drop fish and seafood from your diet. Doing so saves countless lives and cuts profits for a global industry that harms millions of sentient beings daily and destroys our environment.
While you're at it, why not try a plant-based diet and fully reject cruelty? Sign up for our 22-day vegan challenge at VeganerUdfordringen.dk.
Facts About Fish
90% of major fish stocks have been depleted in the last 50 years.
Fishing is the world’s largest animal killer. It’s estimated that over 1 trillion fish die annually due to humans.
Though they have no vocal cords, fish produce low sounds to communicate, rattling teeth and bones, vibrating muscles, and using other body parts.
Like humans being right- or left-handed, lobsters are also right- or left-clawed.
An estimated 300,000 whales, dolphins, and porpoises die yearly as “bycatch,” caught in fishing nets. Many birds, seals, and turtles also die from injuries caused by fishing gear.