My opinion on fish: I worry that consuming wild-caught fish increases the general demand for fish, and that extra demand is fulfilled by fish farming, which can involve a lot of suffering. As you can see in the graph below, wild fish catches have been stable for many years because we can’t sustainably catch more wild fish than we do now.
But this may not apply for all species of wild-caught fish.
But there are many other complicating factors. For example: * Wild animal welfare effects of catching wild fish likely dominate, and they are complex and we are clueless about them, just like we are clueless about everything else. * Michael St. Jules pointed out that in some cases reducing the demand for wild-caught fish prevents unsustainable fishing which increases how many fish will be caught in the long-term. So it’s unclear what to do if you are worried about suffering during capture which can be long and intense (more on that suffering here). * If eating wild fish increases fish farming, the effects of that are also complicated. Fish farming is limited by the amount of feed fish that can be caught from the wild. But those are also mostly fished at capacity, or over capacity. Some plan to farm insects in trillions and feed them to farmed fish for a protein source to supplement feed fish. It’s possible that those insects will be sentient and will suffer in farms. The bigger demand for fish, the more likely this will happen.
My opinion on fish: I worry that consuming wild-caught fish increases the general demand for fish, and that extra demand is fulfilled by fish farming, which can involve a lot of suffering. As you can see in the graph below, wild fish catches have been stable for many years because we can’t sustainably catch more wild fish than we do now.
But this may not apply for all species of wild-caught fish.
But there are many other complicating factors. For example:
* Wild animal welfare effects of catching wild fish likely dominate, and they are complex and we are clueless about them, just like we are clueless about everything else.
* Michael St. Jules pointed out that in some cases reducing the demand for wild-caught fish prevents unsustainable fishing which increases how many fish will be caught in the long-term. So it’s unclear what to do if you are worried about suffering during capture which can be long and intense (more on that suffering here).
* If eating wild fish increases fish farming, the effects of that are also complicated. Fish farming is limited by the amount of feed fish that can be caught from the wild. But those are also mostly fished at capacity, or over capacity. Some plan to farm insects in trillions and feed them to farmed fish for a protein source to supplement feed fish. It’s possible that those insects will be sentient and will suffer in farms. The bigger demand for fish, the more likely this will happen.
So yeah, it’s super complicated.