Fishing

Fish Feel Pain

Of all animals, we find fish the most alien. They breathe in another element. We don’t understand their behaviour or their communication, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Fish feel pain. Fish experience stress and fear. They possess memory and the ability to learn. Some fish build nests. Some defend their territory. Others work together with their families to rear their young and can recognise every individual fish in their shoal.

But human beings’ exploitation of fish is based on another reality altogether – a reality where fish are not living creatures but tonnes of lifeless biomass. Millions of fish are suffocated to death or crushed to death in nets – and each one of those millions experiences pain and fear. Millions more are bred in fish farms, where they are packed by their thousands into overcrowded enclosures, often with open wounds and exposed abdomens. And what other animal would be hauled up by a hook stuck in its mouth, throat or stomach.

Both fish farms and industrial fishing have been criticised for destroying the ecology of the sea, for representing the greed of humanity in relation to nature. But the fishing industry also represents the fact that human beings are happy to close their eyes to suffering if there is money to be made.

But you can’t close your eyes to the facts; fish too are animals that feel pain.