Animal welfare matters. All sentient animals used for food deserve compassion, and killing should be as humane as possible.
Commercially-caught wild fish suffer slow and distressing deaths in huge numbers, estimated at
fishcount.org.uk is a website to increase understanding of fish sentience, raise awareness and promote solutions to the suffering of fishes in commercial fishing. It also aims to increase awareness of the welfare issues in fish farming.
“The question is not, ‘Can they reason?’ nor, ‘Can they talk?’ but, ‘Can they suffer?’”
Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832).
Our most recent estimates of fish numbers have been published in peer-reviewed papers in the journal Animal Welfare. We estimate that 1.1-2.2 trillion wild fishes were caught annually, on average, during 2000-2019. We estimate that 124 billion farmed fishes were killed for food in 2019 (range 78-171 billion).
Key resources on this website include:
- The report Worse things happen at sea: the welfare of wild-caught fish which:
- Provides the first detailed analysis of the fish welfare impacts of commercial fishing
- Describes the first systematic estimate of the number of fish caught
- Proposes measures to mitigate poor welfare through changes to fishing practice during capture and killing and by reducing levels of fishing for feed and food.
- Study to estimate numbers of fish caught globally each year. Download pdf here.
- Study to estimate numbers of farmed fish killed each year with discussion of the welfare issues in fish farming. Download pdf here.
- Presentation (issued August 2013). Download pdf here: The welfare of fish in commercial fishing.
Worse things happen at sea
downloads and links:
See
See
See
The summary report is available in a
Extracts of the full report are now available in French
*Estimated at 0.98 to 2.7 trillion on average each year for 1999-2007 and 0.79 to 2.3 trillion on average each year for 2007-2016. Our latest estimates of fish numbers are available here: wild-caught fish numbers and
farmed fish numbers.