We often view fish and other marine animals
as having short memories, and lacking consciousness.
So why should we care about them?
After all, are they even sentient? Or do they feel pain?
Marine animals are by far the animals
that we kill the most of. To put it into perspective,
we kill somewhere around 60 billion land animals
every single year.
However, it is estimated that we kill somewhere in the region of
1 to 2.7 trillion marine animals in the same period.
So do fish feel pain?
The nervous systems of fish are similar enough
to those of birds and mammals to show that they do feel pain.
And when fish experience something that would cause other animals
physical pain, they behave in ways suggestive of suffering,
and the change in behaviour may last several hours.
Fish will learn to avoid unpleasant experiences,
like electric shocks, and painkillers reduce
the symptoms of pain, that they would otherwise show.
A scientific panel for the European Union concluded
that the evidence shows that fish do feel pain.
Ultimately, it is easier for us to recognize
suffering in an animal such as a pig,
who can vocalise their pain.
But for marine animals,
their suffering may be silent to us,
but it still exists for them, nonetheless.
Fish have also been shown to have stress responses,
with their cortisol levels,
a hormone that is released during times of stress,
becoming raised when they were taken out of water
and placed in a bucket.
When it comes to their intelligence,
Australian biologist Culum Brown
states that based on his years of research into fish behaviour and learning,
they're not just any less intelligent or sophisticated
than terrestrial animals.
That idea is a total myth.
Fish can be taught how to evade a trap
and remember it a year later.
Fish can learn from each other, recognize other fish they've spent time with previously,
know their place within social hierarchies
and remember complex maps of their surroundings.
Fish also work together with different species of fish
and show cooperation and trust,
with fish remembering which other fish were cooperative or uncooperative.
The fact that fish can create alliances,
formulate rules and engage in acts of mutualism
as well as alter their behaviours to maximize their own individual success,
demonstrates how highly intelligent and cognitively complicated they are.
"Science has shown us that fishes are intelligent, that they think,
they feel, they have emotions, they can get stressed, they can feel stress relief,
they can be upset, they can be annoyed. They have a lot of characteristics
that make them very special creatures."
Yet, even though these animals are highly intelligent,
and can show emotions and feel pain,
we cause huge amount of suffering, and ultimately death,
to incomprehensible numbers, every single year.
Impaling live baits on hooks is a common commercial practice.
For example, long line fishing uses hundreds, or even thousands
of hooks on a single line, that may be 50 to a hundred kilometres long.
When fish take the bait, they are likely to remain caught
for many hours before the line is hauled in.
Fish caught in the wild are dumped on fishing boats
and will either die by suffocating, being crushed because of the weight of all the other fish on top of them,
or through their internal organs rupturing from the rapid pressure changes, during the ascent.
Another method of catching wild fish involves gill nets,
walls of fine netting in which fish become snared, often by the gills.
They may suffocate in the net because, with their gills constricted, they can not breathe.
If not, they may remain trapped for many hours before the nets are pulled in.
The fish who are still alive when they begin being processed
will then die through a combination of suffocation and evisceration,
which is where the animals are gutted alive.
One Dutch study found that it can take between 55 minutes to 4 hours
for various species of fish to die during asphyxiation.
And some fish can remain conscious from 20 to 40 minutes
after they've been gutted.
Aquafarming, which is the equivalent of factory farming for fish
and is responsible for nearly half of all fish consumed worldwide each year,
involves fish spending their entire lives in underwater enclosures.
Normally, either in sea cages or concrete tanks.
Due to the overcrowding, the fish are more susceptible to disease and suffer from stress and physical injuries,
such as fin damage or spinal deformity, as well as parasitic infections.
It is not uncommon for many of the fish to die in the farms,
and because of this, antibiotic use is rampant within fish farms.
Fish are regularly handled roughly on aquafarms,
and those that are deemed too sick are taken out of the tanks and often beaten to death.
Farmed fish are slaughtered by range of methods, such as gassing with carbon dioxide,
or cutting their gills, without stunning.
Some fish are simply left to suffocate,
and some, left to suffocate whilst on ice,
which causes them significant suffering as they try to get the ice out of their gills.
They are also often processed while still alive.
As even though the cold may paralyze them,
scientific studies have shown that they still remain conscious, and can feel pain and stress
as they begin to be gutted alive.
Alternatively, some are killed by being electrically stunned,
or are hit over the head, before then being bled out.
It is also worth mentioning that many farmed fish,
such as Salmon and Sea Bass, are carnivorous,
meaning they are fed wild caught fish.
And so buying farmed fish also contributes to the suffering of wild fish, as well.
Ultimately, fish are sentient animals, who feel pain and suffer,
and in the case of both farmed fish and wild-caught fish,
not only do these animals suffer,
but they have their lives taken from them, needlessly.
So perhaps, it is time for us to change how we view marine animals,
to understand that how we view fish is based
on outdated opinions, and to question whether they can suffer or fell pain
is to question what has been proven by science.
Perhaps, it is time for us to see fish for who they really are:
feeling intelligent beings,
whose worth far exceeds our desire to eat them.