Fish production falls into two main categories: aquaculture, also known as fish farming, and wild capture, which depends on large-scale, indiscriminate techniques such as bottom trawling and longlining. Both categories of fishing inflict tremendous suffering on animals, and monumental destruction on marine ecosystems. But so do production of meat, dairy, and eggs. Here's the deep dive...
Fish Feel
Let’s start with the obvious: fishing hurts fishes. At least, that much should be obvious, but accepting that fish experience pain and suffering has been a bizarrely contentious historical concession marred by centuries of unscientific, anthropocentric bias. When Henry David Thoreau, writing in 1845, poignantly asked, “Who hears the fishes when they cry?”, he may have been surprised to learn how relevant his question would still be some nearly 200 years later.
Thankfully, science now recognizes that fish feel pain and suffer in ways likely comparable to mammals. Thankfully but also sadly, because rather than relying on nonviolent methods to confirm fishes’ ability to feel pain—such as anatomical study that readily demonstrates fish possess pain receptors, or behavioral observation in natural contexts, many scientists have insisted on performing cruel laboratory experiments that inflict extreme pain and psychological suffering on fishes.
We do not need to deliberately harm fish in order to confirm that they feel pain. Indeed, some scientists say we should not insist on confirmation at all, but rather practice the precautionary principle: that is, if there’s reasonable evidence that fish may feel pain—and there has long been an abundance—then we should treat them as though they do.
Oceans of Harm
Beyond the plight of fishes themselves, fishing also has serious impacts on our oceans and other marine animals. (We’ll look at issues related to freshwater fishing separately). The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) calls unsustainable fishing the largest threat to ocean life and habitats. And while there are serious moral implications for all types of fishing given the fact that fish feel pain and want to live, when it comes to sustainability, the worst impacts relate to industrial or commercial fishing, which entails both wild-caught fishing and fish farming, aka aquaculture.
Wild-Caught Fishing
A fishery is defined as any area where fish are caught for recreational or commercial purposes. According to the WWF, 85% of the world's fisheries are already fully exploited or overfished. Overfishing leads to severe depletion of fish populations and species on a scale that is difficult to recover from. This in turn leads to the overpopulation of certain species of fish and other sea life, as well as the decline of species that depend on the depleted fish species for food, causing serious imbalances and harm to entire marine ecosystems.
Approximately 49% of the global fish catch is wild catch, and more than half of that is caught via techniques that deploy massive nets to capture the fish. The most common method is “bottom trawling,” where iron nets as wide as a football field or more are dragged along the ocean floor, razing everything in their path. Bottom trawling is responsible for more than a quarter of global fish catch, while midwater trawling, where giant nets are dredged through the ocean but not raked across the seafloor, makes up 10%. “Purse seine” fishing, which involves dropping nets up to a mile wide and long over large schools of fish, accounts for another 20%.
Gillnets (4% of global catch), nicknamed “walls of death,” involve miles of nearly invisible vertical netting being suspended in the ocean or allowed to drift, in which fish become trapped by their gills when their heads pass through. Another method is the use of longlines, in which a line as long as 50 miles or more is baited with up to 10,000 hooks, then either anchored near the ocean floor or suspended at a depth. The line is mechanically pulled in and rebaited every 12-24 hours, then dropped back into the ocean. None of these killings are swift. All in all, it’s estimated some 1-2 trillion wild fish are caught and killed in commercial fishing each year.
Bycatch
In addition to the direct harms of fishing and overfishing, billions of non-target marine animals are injured and killed each year as “bycatch,” the term used to describe the staggering numbers of unwanted fishes, birds, seals, penguins, whales, dolphins, sharks, turtles, rays, and other sea animals who are indiscriminately caught as “collateral damage” in large fishing nets and other fishing equipment. They are then discarded—maimed, dead, or dying— back into the ocean.
More than 300,000 small whales, dolphins, and porpoises die excruciating deaths each year from entanglement in fishing gear, making "bycatch" the single-largest cause of death for small cetaceans. Longline fishing alone is estimated to hook and kill more than 300,000 seabirds annually, including at least 100,000 albatross (many estimates are much higher), who mate for life, have very low reproductive rates, and often do not begin breeding until they are 10 years old. 15 of the 22 known albatross species are currently threatened with extinction, and longline fishing is considered their greatest threat. Like albatross, hundreds of thousands of critically endangered loggerhead and leatherback turtles drown each year on longlines. The WWF says capture by longlines, trawls and gillnets is the gravest threat to most populations of marine turtles.
But this is just a drop in the ocean of suffering inflicted on trillions of sentient individuals by the fishing industry. It is estimated that at least 40% of the total catch by global fisheries every year is nontarget or “collateral” sea creatures. This means that for every 10 fish caught, 4+ marine animals are discarded as bycatch, often severely wounded or dying, if not dead already.
Ghost Gear
Additionally, fishing methods like bottom trawling destroy seabed ecosystems and sensitive habitats like coral reefs, further imperiling marine life. But the brutal impacts of fishing gear are even more far reaching. As much as one million tons of "ghost gear"— fishing equipment that has been lost or discarded at sea— enters the ocean every year, and can continue killing marine life for decades or even centuries after it first enters the ocean.
Indeed, ghost gear is responsible for pushing some species to the brink of extinction, harming 66% of marine mammal species, half of seabird species and all species of sea turtles, according to WWF. It also damages vital marine habitats such as coral reefs and mangroves, impairing the ocean's capacity to function as a crucial heat and carbon sink, which helps mitigate climate warming.
Emissions
Every year, trawling razes an area of the ocean floor equivalent to the Amazon rainforest—over and over, without any interval to recover. Some coral reef and sponge colony habitats could take centuries to replenish, while for others the damage to date has been deemed irreversible. And as with the Amazon— commonly referred to as the “lungs of the earth,”— enormous amounts of stored CO2 are released as a result of this destruction.
A 2024 meta-analysis determined that the annual carbon emissions from bottom trawling are equal to approximately 40% of the annual transportation emissions in the United States, confirming previous research. A prior study from 2021 found that the carbon emissions produced by bottom trawling are as much as the entire aviation industry. When the iron nets rake the sea floor, they not only swallow everything in their path, they also disturb the coal stored in ocean sediment, releasing carbon dioxide into the water that ultimately ends up in the atmosphere.
Fish Farming
In addition to the trillions of wild fish and other target and non-target sea creatures killed each year, an estimated 130+ billion farmed fish and 630+ billion farmed crustaceans are reared and slaughtered annually. Fish farming, also referred to as aquaculture, is often touted as a sustainable way to feed the growing human population while protecting wild fish. But for fish and other marine animals who are farmed, nothing about their existence is meaningfully protected.
Farmed fish live their whole lives confined in overcrowded, floating pens or cages where they experience severe physical and psychological suffering. The intense stocking levels lead to toxic levels of ammonia and nitrates from waste that sicken many of the fish and contaminate the surrounding waters. Parasite infestations and bacterial infections are also widespread. Countless investigations have revealed the horrors that farmed fish routinely endure, just like their terrestrial counterparts on meat, dairy and egg farms.
And in the same way that feed must be procured for farmed land animals (some 36% of global crop calories are fed to farmed animals), so farmed fish must also be provided with feed. This feed is overwhelmingly comprised of wild fish or of crops like corn, soy, or grains. And while proponents of aquaculture have claimed that fish farming has drastically reduced the numbers (and associated harms) of wild caught fish, a recent study found that the numbers of wild fish killed to feed farmed fish is between 27 and 307 percent higher than previous estimates.
According to the researchers, this is in part because fish feed formulations have been drastically misleading, with millions of tons of wild fish being laundered as a “byproduct” ingredient. Their analysis suggests that, rather than the commonly cited figure of 11%, as much as 26% of global wild fish catch is fed to farmed fish in the form of fishmeal and fish oil.
The researchers also emphasize that to whatever extent aquaculture may have reduced wild-caught fishing, it has involved a trade-off that shifts harms to land-based ecosystems, noting: “Widely cited estimates of declines in wild fish use from 1997 to 2017 entailed a trade-off of a more than fivefold increase in feed crops over the same period…species groups that are fed less wild fish generally have more intensive crop farming impacts. Species groups using herbivorous fish feeds consume more than twice as much land and 43% more fresh water as species groups that are fed carnivorous feeds.”
These feed crops, as we’ll explore in the next section, entail a host of serious harms to marine and terrestrial ecosystems alike. But examining those harms leads us to an even more poorly understood and sinister contribution to the destruction of our oceans.
Destroying Our Seas for Bacon, Egg and Cheese
Fish consumption isn’t the only food choice that’s hurting fish and our oceans. The meat, dairy and egg industries are also leading contributors, through a variety of destructive mechanisms.
Dead Zones
Farming animals is the number one cause of ocean dead zones. The billions of land animals farmed each year for meat, dairy and eggs generate massive amounts of manure and urine waste. And due to the scale and intensity of industrial animal agriculture to meet demand for meat and dairy, animal feed crops (including those used to feed farmed fish) use more pesticides and fertilizers than crops intended for human consumption. Animal feed crops are more often grown in monoculture systems, which are more susceptible to pests and diseases, leading to higher pesticide use. The allowable limits for pesticide use in animal feed are also much higher than for crops grown for human consumption.
These pesticides, fertilizers and manure, which contain excessive amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus, run off into rivers and streams and eventually reach the ocean, where they spur rapid, large scale growth of algae, known as “algal blooms.” When the algae die, microbes decompose the organic matter, consuming most of the oxygen in the water in a process known as eutrophication. This creates hypoxic (oxygen-deficient) "dead zones" where fish and many other marine organisms cannot survive, and perish in massive numbers. There are at least 530 confirmed marine dead zones worldwide, but the true number is likely much higher as many areas haven't been surveyed, and the number of dead zones is only expected to continue to increase.
But it doesn’t stop there.
Earth’s Greatest Carbon Sink: Sunk?
The UN calls the world’s oceans our greatest ally against climate change. They produce 50 percent of all the oxygen we breathe, absorb 30 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions and soak up a staggering 90 percent of the excess heat from global warming. As the planet’s largest carbon sink, the ocean is crucial to reducing the worst impacts of climate change.
But the soaring levels of CO₂ and heat absorbed by the ocean over the past five decades have led to severe impacts like acidification and ocean warming that have drastically impaired its ability to store CO₂, and that are gravely imperiling or outright destroying ocean life and ecosystems.
As one of the largest human-caused sources of climate change, animal agriculture contributes to ocean warming by emitting as much as 37% of global greenhouse gases. Since the oceans absorb 90% of the excess heat generated by greenhouse gases, this leads to sea temperature rise. As oceans warm, they release more CO₂ (the warmer the water, the less gas it holds), increasing global heating and associated climate disasters. Warmer water also accelerates the decomposition of organic matter, releasing more nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 300× more heat-trapping than CO₂.
Bottom trawling, previously discussed here, releases another 370 million metric tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere ever year, further exacerbating global warming. Fishing practices that target species like krill also impair the ocean's ability to sequester carbon as krill play a vital role in drawing down CO₂ from the atmosphere.
It's O-fish-al: Plant-Based Is Better!
Given the dire impacts of not just fishing but all forms of animal-based food production on our oceans, scientists urge that a plant-based diet is one of the most important choices we can make to protect our oceans and climate. Thankfully, vegan fishless fish products are off the hook— literally! There are tons of delicious plant-based fish and "seafood" alternatives that you can buy at the store or whip up at home. A personal fave for flavor and texture are Gardein's crispy, melt-in-your-mouth fishless filets, widely available here in the U.S.
There are also loads of sea-friendly recipes you can make at home if you enjoy cooking, using everything from jackfruit, hearts of palm, tofu, mushrooms, banana blossoms and more to brilliantly recreate the flavors and mouthfeel of your favorite marine menu items.
And then there's beans. If you follow us, you know we’re a bit obsessed with beans—their benefits for human and planetary health cannot be overstated. (We use “beans” as shorthand for the larger family of legumes, which includes thousands of varieties of beans, peas, chickpeas, lentils, and peanuts.)
Whether for their sustainability superpowers, knockout nutritional advantages, affordability, or near-universal culinary appeal, beans are one of the most beneficial foods on the planet. So much so that doctors now recommend 3 servings of beans per day, while experts promote beans as the best food to effectively address the double crises of climate change and global food insecurity.
Beans also offer incredible recipe versatility! They can take center stage as the main entrée, serve up fiber, flavor and protein in salads or sides, and even go bean-cognito in desserts. Beans are also exceptional alternatives to meat and dairy, able to be swapped in a broad range of dishes from breads, brownies and cakes to bacon, eggs and burgers. So it should come as no surprise that beans are the star ingredient in some positively fin-tastic fish alternative recipes.
Fish-Free Recipe
Our favorite is this quick and easy “Chickpea of the Sea” mock tuna salad brought to you by our How You Bean! campaign. For those looking to get more creative, there are dozens of variations online, but our standby is as simple as it is delicious.
Ingredients:
1 can chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 cup Vegenaise or other vegan mayo
1/4 cup chopped bell pepper or celery
1/4 cup chopped red onion
1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon nutritional yeast
dash of dill
dash of mustard
dash of pepper
More options: capers, pickle relish, dulse/seaweed flakes for fishier taste, salt or salt alternative
Method: drain and rinse chickpeas, then roughly mash in a bowl using a potato masher or your preferred implement. Chop veggies and stir in all other ingredients. Serve on your favorite bread (fresh or toasted), in a wrap (works great in lettuce wraps too!), or simply as a delicious side.
But the humble garbanzo bean doesn't stop there! You can also use chickpeas to help save our seas with these rave-review vegan fish filet and fish cake recipes.
For more creative culinary wizardry, check out this roundup of "30 of the best vegan fish and seafood recipes."