Fish Welfare in UK Wild Caught Fisheries (Animal Ask)

Wild caught fishing is distinguished both by the huge number of animals affected and by the complete neglect of their welfare during slaughter. Fish suffer from numerous sources of harm during wild capture, including injuries from hooks and nets, injuries from changes in pressure, asphyxiation, injuries from being out of water, gill cutting, and live gutting.
Above even the horrors of land animal agriculture, fishing is distinguished by the extreme brutality of the ways the animals are killed. While during slaughter, a farm animal might suffer acutely over a period of seconds or minutes, fish may suffer for hours or even days in some cases. This long duration might lead one to expect that their suffering is less acute, but in fact they are injured in a variety of ways during the capture process and can be said to be dying from many causes at once. This suggests that their deaths involve a tremendous amount of suffering.
Legislation currently provides no protection against these horrors, as these animals are specifically excluded from even the minimal protection of the Animal Welfare Act (DEFRA, 2006a). This means that there is not even a requirement to minimise their suffering – let alone any specific legislation regarding best practises for their welfare – such as the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations or a specific Code of Practice (DEFRA, 2006b). Therefore, the largest group of vertebrate animals slaughtered for their meat in the UK are also the group that have essentially no protection under the law.
Despite this striking exception, the UK government is considered a world leader in animal welfare. Working on animal welfare in the UK might therefore serve as encouragement for other countries to begin to follow suit.
Despite the massive scale and neglect of the topic, wild caught fishing has received relatively little attention from animal advocates, though this is starting to change following the release of the extremely popular Netflix documentary, Seaspiracy. Work on this subject is difficult because of the lack of technological and economic feasibility of many welfare reforms, as well as a lack of research. However, we think some exploratory work on this subject would be valuable.
Work on this subject would begin with an ask - for example, preferentially catching larger fish or banning bottom trawling - that is motivated by an environmental angle. There is great benefit to beginning work on the subject, and the potential for many more important asks to come. Most prominently, advocates can work towards requiring stunning before slaughter, though we are currently far away from achieving that. We are eager to speak with any organisation considering starting work on the subject to help them more confidently identify priorities in this area. Though this report is focused on the case of the UK, many parts of this report also apply to fisheries and other countries.