Catching Up - Fish Welfare in Wild Capture Fisheries (Eurogroup for Animals)

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Introduction

Every year, somewhere around one trillion (1,000,000,000,000) wild fish are captured, with a significant majority being killed for food. Even with this conservative estimate, this far outnumbers any animal farmed for food, and yet despite scientific evidence that fish are sentient - i.e. have the capacity to suffer fear, pain or distress as well as a sense of well-being - public concern and consumer awareness about fish and their welfare is far behind that of other farmed animals.

It is true that unlike farmed fish, wild fish enjoy a near-natural life. However, for wild-caught fish, the end of each life is commonly exceptionally stressful due to practices that would not be allowed in any kind of terrestrial animal production. During the capture process, fish are often chased to exhaustion, crushed, asphyxiated, injured due to interaction with fishing gear, eaten by predators while trapped, or subject to decompression injuries as they are brought to the surface. If they survive the capture process, they often die of asphyxia due to air exposure, or are killed without pre-slaughter stunning. By-catch (e.g. non-target species that are inadvertently caught) that are thrown back into the sea often have little chance of survival.

With more attention on welfare aspects of commercial fishing, better practices can be introduced and enforced, attempting to close the gap between the scientific consensus about the importance of fish welfare, consumer expectations about making welfare-based choices – made possible with more comprehensive labelling - and the reality for fish.

This report looks at the various hazards faced by wild fish throughout the process of capture, through to handling and death, and proposes measures and strategies to reduce unnecessary suffering.

Main hazards to fish welfare during capture

Fish are subject to a multitude of hazards during the capture process, most of which can cause acute stress and even lead to death.

• Crowding: Overcrowding of fish in a given space, such as when hauling them onboard in a net, increases stress levels and can result in physical injuries and/or asphyxiation.
• Physical injuries: Whether due to crowding, interaction with fishing gear or the vessel, the capture process can lead to unintentional injuries such as fin damage, scale damage and puncture wounds. Fish that are injured before being discarded are more likely to die.
• Depredation: When fish are constrained by the fishing gear used, they unable to escape or defend themselves, and are therefore more likely to be preyed upon by a predator.
• Thermal shock: Exposing fish to abrupt temperature increases by raising nets quickly from deeper water, or by using a chilling or freezing process on live fish causes acute physiological responses.
• Barotrauma: When fish are hauled rapidly to the surface from a great depth, they can experience decompression injuries that cause internal bleeding, organ distension and organ rupture.
• Exhaustion: With long capture periods, fish’s stress levels rise as they struggle to escape. This can lead to exhaustion and fatigue death.
• Asphyxiation: The main cause of asphyxiation in capture fisheries is air exposure, but this can also occur when the breathing movements are restricted due to crowding or being crushed against equipment or the vessel.

Fishing methods and their impact on fish welfare

There are three main methods of catching fish: by towing trawls or dredges; by encircling fish by nets; or by static means where fish swim into the gear and become caught or trapped. Depending on the method, different types of fishing gear are used. The below looks at welfare issues related to the capture process.

Trawling and dredging
Trawling involves the capture of fish using a net that is towed behind the vessel. Fish suffer from exhaustion as they are chased by the net, especially at faster towing speeds and with longer soak times. They face injury, asphyxiation and crushing as they are forced into the narrow cod end of the net during the capture process.

Dredging involves the towing of a rigid structure along the seabed to target shellfish. Shellfish come to the surface alive as this is often a requirement for sale. However, non-target species may be injured or suffocated, especially with long soak times.

Ways to improve welfare

• Select well-designed gear that minimises injury
• Reduce towing speed and duration to prevent exhaustion
• Reduce catch sizes to prevent crowding
• Minimise ascent rates to limit decompression injuries

Seine nets
With purse seine fishing, a large net is used to surround a shoal of fish. The bottom of the net is then drawn together to enclose them. Fish face injury, asphyxiation and crushing if they are hauled on board in nets.

Ways to improve welfare

• Reduce catch sizes and prevent crowding
• Crowd fish in steps and to the minimum density possible
• Pump fish on board instead of lifting with nets

Hanging nets
A gill net is a wall of netting that hangs in the sea, invisible to fish. When fish are too large to swim through the mesh of the net, they become trapped by their gills as they try to reverse out. Tangle/ trammel comprise looser-hung gill nets that entangle fish rather than trap them. Fish can suffer from damage to their gills, fins and scales due to contact with nets.

Ways to improve welfare

• Use thicker twines in place of monofilament
• Reduce duration of capture to limit depredation
• Reduce target depth and minimise ascent rates to limit decompression injuries

Hook and line
Longlining involves a line of light rope or heavy nylon, sometimes many kilometres long, with numerous baited hooks used to target particular species. With pole and line fishing, fishers use single or multiple hooked rod and reel set-ups to catch demersal species, often using live bait to create a feeding frenzy.

In all cases, hooks can become deeply embedded (deep-hooking) if fish try to swallow the bait, with certain types of hook causing more damage.

Ways to improve welfare

• Choose hooks that cause least injury, e.g. barbless and circle hooks
• Prohibit the use of live bait
• Reduce duration of capture to prevent exhaustion and limit depredation
• Hooks are removed gently and not torn from fish

Traps

Pots, creels and other fish traps are structures where fish or shellfish are guided through funnels that encourage entry but limit escape. Traps are usually baited and are often left for several days. Non-target species have difficulties escaping traps and are vulnerable to starvation or being preyed upon by a predator.

Ways to improve welfare

• Select well-designed gear that minimises injury
• Reduce duration of capture to limit depredation

Main hazards to fish welfare after capture

Between capture and possible or eventual death, fish face a range of hazards.

Onboard handling
When landing fish using nets, the pressure can cause crushing, resulting in physical injuries or asphyxiation. Further injuries can result when fishers pull entangled fish from the net rather than pushing them through. Larger fish that are brought on board using a gaff hook can bleed to death due to the severity of injuries.

Onboard sorting leaves fish vulnerable to additional hazards that may have a cumulative impact on welfare. Prolonged exposure to air, increased temperatures, impact with or entrapment in equipment such as conveyor belts, being thrown or moved with gaffs are just some of the risks fish face. For fish caught using hooks, de-hooking can inflict extra injuries. Some fish may even have body parts removed, e.g. the bill, for economic reasons or easier handling.

Where fish need to be stored alive after capture, whether for live sale or use in aquaculture, this can lead to sublethal stress or even death.

Ways to improve welfare

• Fish should be brought on board using fish pumps rather than nets
• The use of gaff hooks should be minimised and should always be followed immediately by humane slaughter
• Time spent out of water before slaughter should be minimised
• Fishers should be educated on the correct use of gears and equipment, with a focus on reducing stress and harm

Slaughter

In most cases in wild capture fisheries, no specific killing method is used. Death results incidentally during the capture and processing of the fish, and often results in inhumane slaughter through one of the following methods:

• Death in air: A slow process whereby gill collapse results in asphyxiation, causing a maximal stress response.
• Live chilling and death in ice slurry: Placing fish in chilled water or ice slurry induces cold shock, which simultaneously chills, sedates and eventually asphyxiates the fish.
• Exsanguination: Blood is drained by cutting the major blood vessels, and depending on the species, can involve throat cut, gill cut or pectoral cut. This often takes place without stunning, resulting in a slow death.
• Decapitation: Even with the complete separation of the head from the rest of the body, loss of consciousness is not necessarily immediate, depending on the species.

Several methods of humane fish slaughter of fish exist, where killing is preceded by stunning that renders fish unconscious and insensible to pain:

• Electrical stunning/electrocution: Depending on the parameters used, electricity can be used to render fish insensible by stunning or kill them by electrocution. As yet uncommon in wild-capture fisheries, this method has the advantage that handling is minimised, large numbers of fish can be stunned at the same time, and a stressful death due to air exposure can be largely avoided.
• Percussive stunning/killing: In percussive stunning, the fish is removed from the water and restrained before a blow is delivered to its head. When the blow is delivered correctly, cranial pressure massively increases, leading to immediate loss of consciousness and sensibility. In the wild capture context, this method would only be practical for the stunning of high-value fish, in low volumes.
• Spiking: This involves inserting a spike through the fish’s skull to destroy the brain. Performed correctly - with individual handling and expert execution - it results in immediate brain death.

Ways to improve welfare
The most urgent need to improve welfare in wild capture fisheries is to further develop and implement humane slaughter practices. An effective stunning method followed by a suitable killing method, or a killing method that results in immediate loss of sensibility, should be applied as soon as possible after capture.

Fish welfare in fisheries management

Overfishing, the removal of a species of fish from a body of water at a faster rate than the population can replenish itself, remains a serious problem worldwide, with the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that in 2015, one-third of the world's fish stocks were overfished. Overfishing leads to resource depletion, reduced growth rates, low biomass levels, and in some cases, upsets entire marine ecosystems.

Discarded catch, or by-catch, are fish that are returned to the sea, either dead or alive, for reasons such as being too small, due to economic or market demands, or due to fishing quotas being exceeded. By-catch is often injured or highly stressed during the capture process, and as a result, survival rates when thrown back into the sea can be low.

Mutilation of live creatures – such as the declawing of crabs and shark finning – also raises serious welfare concerns.

Ghost gear - fishing gear (such as nets, traps or hook and line) that has been lost or discarded by fishers and that can continue to passively catch fish and other marine creatures – can have an ongoing negative impact on animal welfare. It can inflict physical injury or cause asphyxiation or depredation, and is an unrecorded source of mortality and pollution.

Ways to improve welfare

• Fishing levels and environmental management regimes should aim to reach and maintain the largest fish populations that ‘optimal’ environmental conditions can maintain.
• By-catch should be reduced or where possible, eliminated.
• Discards that have a poor chance of survival should be humanely killed.
• No body part should be removed from a live animal.
• Efforts should be made to limit ghost gear, including clearly marking gear, logging lost gear, and recovering gear.

Fish welfare in EU capture fisheries

Article 13 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union requires that EU policies, including fisheries policies, ‘pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals’. However, in spite of this, there is no explicit protection of the welfare of wild-caught fish in EU regulations, including in the 2013 Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) which encompasses the conservation of all marine biological resources i.e. fish and marine ecosystems - and the management of fisheries activities.

The CFP does include provisions directly relevant to fish welfare and protection – such as regulations on the technical aspects of fishing gear and how they are used – but these face issues in terms of implementation and compliance, as well as transparency and respect of scientific advice.

This means that the welfare of the 40-65 billion wild fish captured in EU fisheries every year needs better protection.

Conclusion

The welfare of wild fish has traditionally been overlooked and their plight has had little visibility in civil society, policy circles and in the animal welfare movement in general. With the body of evidence now clearly showing that finfish have well-established capacities for sentience, pain and fear, it is essential to reduce the level of suffering of wild-caught fish as much as possible.

The wide range of technologies and practices used include many opportunities to improve fish welfare. Foremost among opportunities and priorities is the implementation of effective stunning before slaughter.

Equipment and processes used in wild capture should all be reviewed with fish welfare in mind. Ultimately, to meet consumer demand for higher welfare fish products - and continue to raise awareness of the importance and relevance of fish welfare - product labelling should include clear welfare information so that consumers can make welfare-based purchase decisions.

A concerted effort is required from the fishery sector and from regulators to implement meaningful improvements not only improve the welfare of wild-caught fish, but that will also ensure that issues related to fisheries management – such as overfishing, by-catch and ghost fishing – are tackled in a comprehensive way.