Hey, thanks for writing this, there are some interesting ideas here. A bit of a nitpick, but I’m not sure that your “estimate 250 million fish years are spent in agony each year as wild fish are killed by asphyxiation or being gutted alive” is quite accurate . You are extrapolating from the length of time it takes for herring, cod, whiting, sole, dab and plaice to suffocate to all wild-caught fish. But I think that all of these are rather big fish and they likely were studied and mentioned by FishCount because it takes so long for them to suffocate. For example, 17%–65% of all wild-caught fishes are anchovies (295–908 billion fishes per year), and this video claims that “anchovies die immediately when they are out of water.” (though I don’t know how reliable that video is). I tried to estimate the same things (after reading the same text) here. I estimated that 0.7–49 million herring, cod, whiting, sole, dab, and plaice are suffocating in the air after being landed at any time (and didn’t make an estimate for other fishes). Also, there’s already some research on humane slaughter of fish, someof it is funded by Open Philanthropy, I don’t know if it is neglected or not.
Thanks for the correction, that is definitely good news for the fish (albeit slightly bad news for my research judgement lol)!
Although another consideration pointing in the other direction is that larger fish probably have larger brains with more neurons, which may render them more morally relevant
Hey, thanks for writing this, there are some interesting ideas here. A bit of a nitpick, but I’m not sure that your “estimate 250 million fish years are spent in agony each year as wild fish are killed by asphyxiation or being gutted alive” is quite accurate . You are extrapolating from the length of time it takes for herring, cod, whiting, sole, dab and plaice to suffocate to all wild-caught fish. But I think that all of these are rather big fish and they likely were studied and mentioned by FishCount because it takes so long for them to suffocate. For example, 17%–65% of all wild-caught fishes are anchovies (295–908 billion fishes per year), and this video claims that “anchovies die immediately when they are out of water.” (though I don’t know how reliable that video is). I tried to estimate the same things (after reading the same text) here. I estimated that 0.7–49 million herring, cod, whiting, sole, dab, and plaice are suffocating in the air after being landed at any time (and didn’t make an estimate for other fishes). Also, there’s already some research on humane slaughter of fish, some of it is funded by Open Philanthropy, I don’t know if it is neglected or not.
Thanks for the correction, that is definitely good news for the fish (albeit slightly bad news for my research judgement lol)!
Although another consideration pointing in the other direction is that larger fish probably have larger brains with more neurons, which may render them more morally relevant