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[–] 46 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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

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  • [+] 13 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 45 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 117 points 1 year ago* (32 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 164 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Yup. But deep down we all kinda knew that, right? It was always fish torture for sport.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It never made sense to me that “fish don’t feel pain”. Like, even as a kid I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t. Who would be okay with a metal hook through their mouth? Even if they didn’t feel the same kind of pain we do (I’m sure they do), there’s got to be some part of their body screaming that things aren’t okay. Add on top of that the sudden inability to breathe and it really is just torture.

    I like the idea of fishing (like relaxing on a boat with a goal) but I couldn’t do it

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  • [–] 41 points 1 year ago (13 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (12 children)

    So long as you release them after a few minutes, they feel no pain whatsoever. Not even the hook through their mouth or gills.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago* (2 children)
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    That's a pretty bold claim, do you have a source for that?

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  • [–] 33 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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%.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    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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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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".

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  • 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?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    And yet others will prepare Ikizukuri.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikizukuri

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    that's why there is Ikejime, the japanese method to dispatch fish

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 70 points 1 year ago* (46 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 45 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Also co2 is easier because you can fill a pit with it, nitrogen will just float about and disperse.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    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.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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

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  • [+] 13 points 1 year ago (33 children)
  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (31 children)
  • [+] -20 points 1 year ago (30 children)
  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    All animals, us included, are food for other animals, and plants.

    That's what is called an "ecosystem".

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    buying meat from the grocery store is not an ecosystem

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  • [–] 32 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Human beings are omnivores and nature doesn't moralize.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago

    “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

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  • [+] -11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Good old natural factory meat

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    This is why I primarily only eat what I shoot, or what I catch.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    All food is cruel. You can, at most, minimize the cruelty.

    But you should know that millions of insects are killed in agriculture. Insects are indeed animals.

    You can, if you want, minimize the amount of animals your presence in this world brings to an early death. But you cannot reduce it to zero no even near zero. Probably hundreds of small animals (most insects but surely many other small animals) die each day because things you do.

    The line on how much do you want to minimize might be on one place for you, and that's ok. But you have to respect other people lines as well.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    This...plants feel pain. Mushrooms may actually be sentient. Everyone draws their own lines, it doesn't make them better or worse.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    There is overwhelming scientific evidence that animals feel pain and are sentient like us, and despite the pop science articles to the contrary there is no scientific evidence that plants feel pain or have sentience at all. Plants respond to stimulus in very complicated ways, that's what we have evidence for. Don't pretend the two are equivalent. Stop getting your ideas from sensationalist pop science garbage and read the actual studies.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [+] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I grew up on a farm and enjoy eating meat

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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! ]

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.

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