science

I've heard that water-boarding is a very intense form of torture; and that is essentially about making a person feel like they are drowning. I wonder how the fish experience compares.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

I'm still not going to tell you where my secret fishing spot is, no matter how many times you ask or scientific studies you perform.

I was under the impression that to a fish pain is more of a "get out of there" signal than what it is to us.

This is why net fishing is so problematic (apart from obvious environmental conserns and bycatch).

Stun your fish people. Don’t let their blood clot and lungs collapse while still conscious for multiple minutes. It’s cruel.

This is why you just shoot them in the head with a harpoon when you take them out of the water

Poor thing :(

Bring back dynamite fishing then!

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?

How about a new sport... Catch the fish under water and slap him a little, but not too hard?

Or how about just riding your rubber boat to where the fish are, then dropping a speaker and shouting "fuck you fish!" Threw the speaker? You could even hurt them intellectually!