So fishing for sport where they catch and release is basically torture by getting injured by the hook and then asphyxiating for however long they are out of water before being released.
This article in particular is talking about when leaving fish in open air or ice water for the purpose of slaughter. Obviously that would hurt until the fish dies.
So long as you release them after a few minutes, they feel no pain whatsoever. Not even the hook through their mouth or gills.
And how do you know that?
Hah, I guess my sarcasm got missed on this comment! The premise that fish can’t feel pain because we don’t know for a certainty that they can is blatantly just mental gymnastics to justify the continued practice of a cruel hobby.
Sorry, classic case of Poe’s law! There are plenty of people who write what you said without any sarcasm, so without any indicators there’s no way to know.
Hah, I figured the second sentence was as parodically on-the-nose as I could manage without a satire indicator.
Sadly people literally write that and mean it. See the other reply:
They really don’t seem to be bothered by it.
Same reasoning behind not giving infants anesthetics during surgery.
Back when I used to fish a lot, they were out of the water for 30 seconds tops, and I caught the same fish multiple times within 15 minutes on several occasions. They really don’t seem to be bothered by it.
Most of them die after that.
That’s a pretty bold claim, do you have a source for that?
https://myoutdoorbasecamp.com/catch-and-release-fishing/
Up to 40% about 5-6 days mortality rate.
Not some anecdotal bullshit happening within a day and they actually tagged fish. Not just guessing. These were actual studies.
how would you like to get a hook through the cheek while moseying around the house? Yeah, didn’t think so.
They really don’t seem to be bothered by it
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of vegans suddenly cried out in terror
The stats on fish survival after being caught and released is actually pretty sad. If I remember correctly there was a lengthy study that showed a survival rate of only like 40%.
Was this the fish passing after a few minutes, hours, days? If you remember at all. Was there any controlling for gill damage during the catch? I know some idiots who will hold them up by the gills for pictures, I wonder if that causes damage? Or just dying from shock? I wonder if I can find the study
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Suddenly all the cutesy indie life sims with fishing minigames don’t seem so wholesome any more
Feeling like a fish out of water sounds much darker now.
Yes, I’d say so.
If by “release” you mean “keep alive out of the water until they die in 22 minutes” then yeah, that’s a barbaric way to release D:
Not in this article, or anywhere else is it currently known what a fish feels in relation to how humans feel pain. Including asphyxiation or hooks. We don’t currently have the capabilities to know how a fish interprets that stuff.
Well, IMO that’s actually pretty easy to determine. I assume the pain you feel being cut by a hook is simmiliar to pain I feel being cut because we react the same way. Basically every living thing reacts the same way to cuts, yelping, bleeding then flight/fight. Cats, dogs, animals of all sorts go through the same steps when they are cut so it’s a safe assumption their pain is simmiliar. And things that don’t react, such as cutting a techincally alive potato, aren’t really feeling pain. Idk maybe potatoes silently scream, can’t disprove it, but that’s just not the same as creature that flee from threats
So while we don’t know what a fish thinks about suffocating in air, it’s a reasonable assumption that it’s similar to humans suffocating in water, unpleasant. We both thrash around and do our best to breathe again. Sure, in a philosophical sense it’s imposible to know what other creatures think, even other humans that can verbally communicate, but that ignores some of the more obvious context clues.
Except it isn’t reasonable to think a fish interprets pain feeling “painful” the same way humans do. We don’t know that’s a fish “hurts”.
Highlights from the Wikipedia article on Pain in fish
The central nervous system (CNS) of fish contains a spinal cord, medulla oblongata, and the brain, divided into telencephalon, diencephalon, mesencephalon and cerebellum.
Studies show that fish exhibit protective behavioural responses to putatively painful stimuli. When acetic acid or bee venom is injected into the lips of rainbow trout, they exhibit an anomalous side-to-side rocking behaviour on their pectoral fins, rub their lips along the sides and floors of the tanks and increase their ventilation rate. When acetic acid is injected into the lips of zebrafish, they respond by decreasing their activity. The magnitude of this behavioural response depends on the concentration of the acetic acid.
Early experiments provided evidence that fish learn to respond to putatively noxious stimuli. For instance, toadfish (Batrachoididae) grunt when they are electrically shocked, but after repeated shocks, they grunt simply at the sight of the electrode
In a 2007 study, goldfish were trained to feed at a location of the aquarium where subsequently they would receive an electric shock. The number of feeding attempts and time spent in the feeding/shock zone decreased with increased shock intensity and with increased food deprivation the number and the duration of feeding attempts increased as did escape responses as this zone was entered. The researchers suggested that goldfish make a trade-off in their motivation to feed with their motivation to avoid an acute noxious stimulus.
We could go philosophy 101 and wonder if you see the same color blue as I do, maybe yours is red? It is easy to say that’s immposible to know, but that ignores everything science understands about visible light spectrums, cone recpetiors in the retina and the genetic markers that lead to color blindness.
Fish have nerve endings, they have brains that can process stimuli and their reactions to human standard “painful” stimuli is identical to our own. What reason is there to even doubt they feel pain simmiliar to our own?
Why wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that fish interpret pain as painful? They have a nervous system, inflicting pain on them will trigger a response in the nervous system, this response is most likely similar to the response in humans, that is the pain response is to avoid/remove whatever is causing the pain.
I remember there was a study done on how to best slaughter swine (pigs).
The methods that were investigated included: a mechanical hit on the head, suffocation in CO2, and some other measures.
What was found was not only that the suffocation method caused significant stress in the animals, but also that the meat collected this way tasted way worse than meat collected through other slaughtering methods.
this could be relevant in this case: if fish suffocate slowly to death, meat producers might have a financial incentive to change that, to be able to sell better-quality meat, possibly at a higher price. anyways, it would make for good advertisement. that is why meat-producers (fish-producers) should take this seriously.
And the reason we still use CO2 slaughter instead of something like Nitrogen is because… They already have machines built for CO2 and just don’t want to pay the cost of changing practices.
Pure greed and laziness.
Also co2 is easier because you can fill a pit with it, nitrogen will just float about and disperse.
It’s just heavier??
It tends to be heavier than air, it will therefore accumulate in low places.
As far as I’m aware NO2 will fill a pit. In the industry I work in NO2 leaks are serious threat because the engines that are worked on are in, what is essentially, a cage that you walk down into. I’ve not experienced it myself but heard from someone who experienced it firsthand as you just start feeling sleepy. I know now that it’s because our bodies are sensitive to asphyxiation from CO2 but not NO2, so as it displaces the oxygen in our lungs you just start getting woozy and tired.
All that being said; I am not an expert. Half this is information from diesel mechanics who work with it and the other half is from random science videos. So take it with a grain of salt.
Most slaughter houses use bolt guns.
Zero pain, or as minimal amount of pain as possible. Like, microseconds. Because afterwards, the entire brain has been… disorganized.
They just know people will buy the meat no matter how much the animals were abused so why would they bother? Even those who see themselves as animal lovers happily look the other way with every purchase. The industry has all the incentives to be exceptionally cruel so of course it is.
My slaughterhouse uses radon. The meat makes my testicle feel funny, and we throw up a lot. And I haven’t had hair in years. But it’s cheap! And so tender.
I never understood the CO2 suffocation idea… I mean, I don’t k ow about fish, but mammals supposedly have a good detection for CO2 in their blood and it’ll set off panic alarms everywhere.
Ignoring the vegetarian discussion for a minute, if they could at least use a different gas, say nitrogen or something, it should be a lot less stressful for the animals
“Are you insane? This gas costs a twelfth of a cent more! There’s no way we could implement this.”
Oh, yeah, there’s the answer
I have a crazy idea here. Now hear me out, this is gonna sound like a wackadoodle idea, but,… how about we don’t murder the animals? Crazy, I know.
But I’m hungry
eat non-cruel food. actual food. not animals. animals aren’t food for humans.
Human beings are omnivores and nature doesn’t moralize.
“I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs, a very endearing sight, I’m sure you’ll agree. And even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen. Mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that is when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”
-Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals
Good old natural factory meat
This is why I primarily only eat what I shoot, or what I catch.
I only eat meat that consents. Anybody want to come over for dinner? Coincidentally, you’ll have to sign a waiver.
But on a serious note, how good is venison? Fucking delicious. You ever make chili with it? Goddamn backstrap chili. Like eating heaven.
this depends on where you live, surely. i have open field farms all around me that cooperatively own a slaughterhouse. they sell meat in stores under one brand but you can go to any of the farms and get it directly.
All animals, us included, are food for other animals, and plants.
That’s what is called an “ecosystem”.
buying meat from the grocery store is not an ecosystem
city says i can’t shoot the squirrels anymore tho
There are not enough squirrels. They would be extinct quick.
I live in a no hunt region. So, unless I travel 30 minutes to hunt for 12 hrs, grocery store is the next best thing.
That’s a food web. An ecosystem incorporates the environment organisms live in and how the organisms interact within that environment. The soil, climate and weather are all part of an ecosystem.
I grew up on a farm and enjoy eating meat
Have you tried some good alternatives to meat? Like, try seitan* crumbles in a taco. With all the spices and other toppings it’s really hard to tell the difference. Also, I find it almost impossible to tell an Impossible Whopper with Cheese from a regular Whopper with Cheese, after all the glop they put on it. I know those are both bottom-of-the-barrel meat choices, but maybe branch out and try a thing or two. If you don’t like it - no biggie.
I’ve tried casually dipping my toes into the vegetarian pool with just occasional meat substitutions. Occasionally I find something that’s “No way” but more often than not, I find something that is also really tasty. It’s not meat, but it’s also tasty in a different way, so I don’t miss meat as much. I’ve found vegetarian dishes I actually like. My biggest problem however is getting enough protein in my diet when I start eating mostly veggies.
[* Seitan only if you can handle gluten. Because, it’s like 100% gluten! ]
Meat alternatives are a nice thought. I’m glad they exist for people who can accept them in place of meat. I haven’t found them to be very good substitutes yet so I’m not there. I’ve had the impossible whopper, and while it’s good, it’s not a replacement for me. Hopefully more options come over the years. I’m hopeful for lab grown meat personally since it’d still be meat, just ethically produced.
It’s crazy that people don’t like meat substitutes, but if you tell them it’s not a meat substitute, but actually a special cow from nepal with a different taste, it’s suddenly good and exotic. I hate it when it doesn’t taste like animal suffering.
If that were true, we wouldn’t be able to digest them. Ever tried eating a tree? Or a boulder? Those aren’t food for humans. I’m not gonna argue against moral motivations for veganism, but I will argue against factually incorrect ones.
Animal flesh causes cancer and heart disease. if we were MEANT to eat animals, we wouldn’t get those diseases.
Life causes cancer, plaque build-up causes heart disease. Nothing was meant to do or eat or kill anything, that’s just how life evolved. Again, I’m not arguing over moral stances, I think it’s very admirable. But I mean, even just as mammals we’ve been consuming other animals for more than 200,000,000 years! The reptiles those first mammals evolved from probably ate animals, as the fish those reptiles evolved from probably did as well. Cooked meat is very likely the evolutionary edge that lead to what what we can sentience, it obviously “works” on a biological level. To argue otherwise is delusion.
If eaten in large amounts. Also, herbivore animals get cancer too.
Yes they are. They have been for eons. It’s not all they are and people should work towards meatless options and ethical meat like lab grown. But animals are definitely a food source.
I don’t want to cause plants pain, that’s why I eat meat
Hilarious
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Yes. It’s crazy. That’s why the vast majority of us don’t do it.
It’s one thing to be a vegetarian for health or environmental reasons.
When you try to convince people that meat==murder, you come across as a wackadoodle.
Stress is a hell of a drug
The article does a shitty job of linking to the paper
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-04272-1
It makes a pretty good case that fish experience a lot of pain immediately after being taken out of the water.
I don’t think this will do much to impact commercial fishing, it seems like it’s targeted at the slaughter stages of fish farms
Our population voted someone into the highest office riding on the promise of drilling for more oil and increasing factory farming. We have atomized our culture so much that corporate forces have stripped people of their empathy and care and passion like an overripe banana and we don’t mix perspectives anymore so that we can pull people back.
There’s no hope of ending this misery until those of us who remain thinking with our minds get off the computer and start socializing, organizing, challenging people and pulling people into our idea of a better tomorrow. Most people don’t even know where to find other people to talk to and debate with and this is by design. That’s the trap we’re in we need to break free of, and then maybe if we can get to that point we can start making cultured meats and alternative proteins a thing.
Otherwise, we’re going to fish the oceans until they’re dry and we will create hellish suffering for every life form involved until there’s nothing left to feel pain.
Otherwise, we’re going to fish the oceans until they’re dry and we will create hellish suffering for every life form involved until there’s nothing left to feel pain.
take comfort friend. our atmosphere will be unbreathable and we’ll cook in our own juices long, long, long before the oceans dry up. It’s becoming, every day, ever more unlikely that we’ll wake up to the obvious dilema and be able to save ourselves. And there are some who profit from continuing down the path of stupidity, and our society is following them.
so take comfort. your premise is 100% on target, but the timeline is probably a lot shorter.
Yeah if people don’t care about the equivalence of caging for meats then fish enduring pain is useless.
so those fish that jump out of the water at times experience pain the moment they leave the water? what time range are we talking? the are fish literally crossing land to get to other waters.
Without water, the delicate gill structures that exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide stick together, causing CO2 from respiration to accumulate. These rising levels trigger nociception – the body’s alarm system – which causes the fish to gasp. Eventually the elevated CO2 levels acidify the animal’s blood and cerebrospinal fluid, ultimately resulting in unconsciousness.
Holy shit. That’s horrific.
This is why net fishing is so problematic (apart from obvious environmental conserns and bycatch).
Stun your fish people. Don’t let their blood clot and lungs collapse while still conscious for multiple minutes. It’s cruel.
Let their lungs collapse?..
Yes. The g folds in front and everything shortens.
That’s why we call them gls.
You can also spike the brain of the fish. There’s stuff online about Ikejime which is supposed to be a way to quickly kill the fish to improve the quality of the meat. There’s resources online about it.
So what you’re saying is that Kurt Cobain was wrong and it’s actually not OK to eat fish because they do, in fact, have feelings?
Pretty sure he was being sarcastic
Ya, probably.
Something in the way…
How about a new sport… Catch the fish under water and slap him a little, but not too hard?
Or how about just riding your rubber boat to where the fish are, then dropping a speaker and shouting “fuck you fish!” Threw the speaker? You could even hurt them intellectually!
it’s a lot manlier and cooler to stand in the water and grab the fish with your bare hands anyways, then you can look it in the face and tell it to fear god before letting it go
You could even do a Hakka and watch the fish pee themselves! But a gentle slaps would also be satiafrying.
Where did they throw the speaker?
In to the water! LOL.
I believe this is why Japanese fishermen will sometimes use the ikijime method where you kill the fish fast. I believe it also improves the quality of the meat too.
And yet others will prepare Ikizukuri.
Ikizukuri (生き作り), also known as ikezukuri (活け造り), (roughly translated as “prepared alive”[1]) is the preparing of sashimi (raw fish) from live seafood. In this Japanese culinary technique, the most popular sea animal used is fish, but octopus, shrimp, and lobster may also be used.[2] The practice is controversial owing to concerns about the animal’s suffering, as it is seemingly alive when served.
The restaurant may have one or several tanks of live sea animals for a customer to choose from. There are different styles in which a chef may serve the dish but the most common way is to serve it on a plate with the filleted meat assembled on top of the body.
Ikizukiri may be prepared with only three knife cuts by the chef.[1] They are usually presented with the head still whole so that customers are able to see the continuing gill movements.[3]
look at the video, it’s FUCKED UP. they removed all the meat from the fish and kept it alive attempting to breath on the plate covered in food
There are a small subset there that are pathologically obsessed with the freshness of the fish they eat. Getting parasites from barely prepped sushi is not uncommon.
Wow that’s so fucked up
With net fishing, they’re still out of the water quite a long time whilst being hauled up, dumped, and sorted before being thrown in their sorted holding tank.
that’s why there is Ikejime, the japanese method to dispatch fish
I just use a fish bonker. A firm strike at the base of the head with a club is instant. I can’t say if it preserves the meat as I normally eat it right away or store it for the winter months in the freezer.
This is why you just shoot them in the head with a harpoon when you take them out of the water
Most fish are caught using trawling nets, which as far as I know, can be up to 50 miles long. Gonna need a fucking attack helicopter to handle all that.
Now that’s a job of the future - commandeering a Boeing AH-64E Apache to pulverise several thousand tonnes of fish trapped in a trawling net. Isn’t nature beautiful?
can be up to 50 miles long
I think maybe this should be meters?
World’s largest net. So big it can cover New York City and still have room for some of Jersey.
and still have room for some of Jersey.
nets…Jersey…
Jersey…nets…
New Jersey Nets
Oh. My. God.
Yes 50 meters long lol
Poor thing :(
I was under the impression that to a fish pain is more of a “get out of there” signal than what it is to us.
is what happens to us not in fact a “get out of here” signal to us? what makes you think a fishes subjective experience of pain is any more pleasant than your own?
Our pain isn’t a “get out of here” signal, it’s a “you’ve been hurt” signal. Fish don’t have a reason to suffer. We do, because we’re social creatures.
🤔
Bring back dynamite fishing then!
I’ve heard that water-boarding is a very intense form of torture; and that is essentially about making a person feel like they are drowning. I wonder how the fish experience compares.
I’ll be vegan once we figure out how to stop killing other humans.
Why/how are the two connected?
Delicious long pig addiction? Lol
Wait, this is the fabled “I’m pre-vegan” gloat? I did not think I would ever see it.
I will care about the suffering of fish at the hands of humans once we end human suffering at the hands of other humans.
Is your empathy so small you cannot cope with 2 things at the same time, or you just don’t care?
Little of A little of B, there are bigger issues that the possible suffering of fish, and in the long run I don’t care enough about the possible suffering of fish to change my diet choices.
Why/how are the two connected?
Interesting, I always cared about the suffering of animals far more than us stupid greedy humans
