fishing topics for research papers

60 Fishing Topics & Essay Examples

Need to write a fishing essay? This industry is worth exploring! In the article below, you’ll find everything necessary to perform this challenging task.

🏆 Best Fishing Topic Ideas & Essay Examples

📌 easy fishing topics for essay, 🎣 fishing research paper topics, 👍 good fishing thesis titles, 🐠 research questions about fishing.

In your fishing essay, you might want to write about its history or techniques. Another option is to focus on economics of fisheries. Below we’ve collected everything necessary for students willing to write an essay on fishing. You’ll find fishing research paper topics, questions, and fishing essay examples.

• Analysis of Alaska Fly-Fishing Expedition Business trips are necessary because they motivate the employees after resumption to work harder and skilfully to achieve the objectives of the business. The firm must compute a plan to prevent these risks and control […]
• Ocean Pollution and the Fishing Industry In essence, the activities of over six billion people in the world are threatening the survival and quality of water found in the oceans, lakes and other inland water catchment areas.
• Fishing Rods: A Mathematical Model for the Placement of Line Guides on a Fishing Rod The given data is the guide number from the tip of the fishing rod and the distance from the tip of the fishing rod.
• Fishing Boat Production in the Indian Market The strength of the American company lies in the innovative and flexible approach to creating products that withstand the tests and criticism of the target audience before entering the market.
• Recreational and Commercial Fishing, Pros and Cons Fishing is the activity of catching fish in different ways for commercial and recreational purposes. Commercial fishing is done to catch fish and sell it for profit.
• What Impact Do Fishing Quota Regulations Have on the Fishing Industry of South Africa? Scopes of the study The author of this study has unlimited scopes besides the limitations to conduct research, for instance The researcher has opportunity to examine both negative and positive side of the fishing quota […]
• Aboriginal Cultural Fishing in Australia Cultural fishing practiced by indigenous people on the South coast of Australia for many years contemporarily puts them into opposition to the government due to legislation in the fishing industry.
• Foldable Boats: US Based Fishing Firm’s Culture The organization will change the foldable watercraft design as it tests the waterproof coating and paper products to determine the most suitable design for use in India.
• Southcentral Alaska Sport Fishing Due to the very seasonal nature of most fisheries and the lack of job reporting requirements, comparing employment in the seafood sector to other businesses is difficult.
• Marine Research: Incorporating Into Fishing Policies The realization that the current trends in oceanic bionetwork threaten a shortage in the fundamental water-related protein source for the future population is a major reason for the changes.
• The Commercial Fishing Techniques All of the techniques differently affect various spheres related to the fishing process, such as the environment, the crew’s health, the volume of the catch, and the levels of effort needed.
• Factortame Litigation: Conflict Over Fishing Waters Legislation The proposal seeks to understand the conflict in the application between the U. Therefore, in the U.
• The Fishing Industry of Atlantic Canada The Northwest Atlantic rose exponentially throughout the centuries proving quite significant to most of the North Atlantic regions, especially to the Canadian population, by forming the most reliable economic backbone to the Canadians as well […]
• Fishing Industry in the UAE For centuries fish has been a mainstay of the diet of the people within the U.A.E.and, as a result, has brought about the creation of numerous industries which focus on harvesting, processing and delivering seafood […]
• Impacts of Oil Spill on Dolphins and Fishing in Gulf of Mexico According to a study conducted along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, it was found that the spillage led to the reduction of the food available for dolphins in the region.
• Recreational Shark Fishing Fishing, especially recreational fishing, is considered to be one of the most famous activities all over the world: people like to spend the vast majority of their time in order to use their imagination, attract […]
• What Are Some Fishermen For Fishing During Adverse Weather
• What Is The Theme Of Fishing For Jasmine By John Ravenscroft
• The Impact of Project Eyes on Monitoring Illegal Fishing
• When Patience Leads to Destruction: The Curious Case of Individual Time Preferences and the Adoption of Destructive Fishing Gears
• Types Of Retailers For Fishing Products Shopping
• On the Statistical Significance of Regional Economic Impacts from Recreational Fishing Harvest Limits in Southern Alaska
• Welfare Effects Of Fishery Policies: Native American Treaty Rights And Recreational Salmon Fishing
• The Drama of Fishing Commons: Cournot-Nash Model and Cooperation
• Where the Land Meets The Sea: Integrated Sustainable Fisheries Development and Artisanal Fishing
• The Work Performance Analysis of Sea Fishing in Kolaka Regency
• The Effect Of Fluctuating Water Levels On Reservoir Fishing
• The Impact of Fishing on the Socio Economic Development of Ssi-Bukunja Sub County
• The Value of Recreational Inshore Marine Fishing
• Toward a More Complete Model of Individual Transferable Fishing Quotas: Implications of Incorporating the Processing Sector
• The Effects of Oil Drilling to the Fishing Industry and Possible Alternative Energy Sources
• Positive and Negative Aspects of the Lobster Fishing Industry in Maine
• The Decrease in the Number of Commercial Fishing-Related Deaths Under the Quota System in Alaska
• The Production of Fishing Effort and the Economic Performance of License Limitation Programs
• The Value Of Sport Fishing In The Snake River Basin Of Central Idaho
• Widespread Labor Stickiness in the New England Offshore Fishing Industry: Implications for Adjustment and Regulation
• The Art of Fishing: How to Have a Successful Fishing Trip
• Valuing a Change in a Fishing Site without Collecting Characteristics Data on All Fishing Sites: A Complete but Minimal Model
• The Opportunity Cost of Capital and Optimal Vessel Size in the Norwegian Fishing Fleet
• What You Should Know About Smallmouth Bass Fishing
• Valuing the Unmarketable: An Ecological Approach to the Externalities Estimate in Fishing Activities
• Seasonality and Cointegration in the Fishing Industry of Conrwall
• The Impact Of Fishing On The Service Of Industrialization
• Over Fishing, Problems and Solutions
• Using Qualitative Site Characteristics Data in Marine Recreational Fishing Models
• Vulnerability of Fishing Communities from Sea-Level Change: A Study of Laemsing District in Chanthaburi Province, Thailand
• Social Network Analysis of Price Dispersion in Fishing Quota Lease Markets
• Spiritual Aspects of Fishing in Hemingway’s, The Old Man and the Sea
• Using Revealed Preferences to Infer Environmental Benefits: Evidence from Recreational Fishing Licenses
• Statistical Modelling of Fishing Activities in the North Atlantic
• The Specific Handling Techniques that Must be Done When Fishing
• Optimal Harvest in an Age Structured Model with Different Fishing Selectivity
• Time for Fishing: Bargaining Power in the Baltic Swedish Cod Fishery
• Understanding Fly Fishing Targets On Flowing Water
• The Economic Value Of Marine Recreational Fishing: Applying Benefit Transfer To Marine Recreational Fisheries Statistics Survey
• Over Fishing and Other Threats to the Declining Fish Population
• The Unsustainability Of The Fishing Industry And Solutions
• Simple Adaptive Rules Describe Fishing Behaviour Better than Perfect Rationality in the US West Coast Groundfish Fishery
• Procreation, Fishing, and Hunting: Renewable Resources and Dynamic Planar Systems
• The United States Action on International Fishing Disputes
• Expedition Ideas
• Ocean Research Ideas
• The Old Man and the Sea Research Topics
• Wildlife Ideas
• Extinction Research Topics
• Ocean Pollution Titles
• Water Pollution Research Topics
• Oceanography Research Ideas
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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119 Fishing Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

Fishing is a timeless pastime that has been enjoyed by people all over the world for generations. Whether you are an experienced angler or a beginner looking to learn more about the sport, there are countless topics related to fishing that can be explored through essays. In this article, we will provide you with 119 fishing essay topic ideas and examples to help inspire your writing.

• The history of fishing
• The benefits of fishing for mental health
• Fishing techniques for beginners
• The impact of climate change on fishing
• The best fishing spots around the world
• The cultural significance of fishing in different countries
• How to properly care for and clean fishing equipment
• The role of fishing in conservation efforts
• The ethics of catch and release fishing
• The economic impact of the fishing industry
• The health benefits of eating fish
• The importance of fishing regulations and limits
• The art of fly fishing
• The dangers of overfishing
• The role of technology in modern fishing practices
• The best bait for different types of fish
• The psychology of fishing: why do people enjoy it?
• The impact of pollution on fish populations
• The challenges facing small-scale fishermen
• The history of commercial fishing
• The impact of invasive species on native fish populations
• The benefits of fishing for children
• The best fishing gear for different types of fishing
• The role of fishing in sustainable food systems
• The connection between fishing and spirituality
• The impact of dams and other man-made structures on fish habitats
• The cultural traditions of fishing in indigenous communities
• The future of fishing: how will it evolve in the coming years?
• The benefits of fishing as a form of exercise
• The impact of recreational fishing on fish populations
• The best fishing destinations for a family vacation
• The environmental benefits of fishing
• The role of fishing in local economies
• The impact of overfishing on marine ecosystems
• The best fishing techniques for catching different types of fish
• The benefits of fishing for stress relief
• The impact of commercial fishing on local communities
• The role of fishing in sustainable seafood sourcing
• The best fishing apps for anglers
• The impact of climate change on fish migration patterns
• The benefits of catch and release fishing
• The impact of fishing on coral reefs
• The best fishing techniques for catching trophy fish
• The benefits of fishing for physical health
• The impact of fishing on endangered species
• The role of fishing in wildlife conservation efforts
• The best fishing destinations for a solo trip
• The impact of fishing on river ecosystems
• The benefits of fishing for team building
• The impact of fishing on water quality
• The role of fishing in disaster relief efforts
• The best fishing techniques for catching fish in different seasons
• The benefits of fishing for community engagement
• The impact of fishing on coastal communities
• The role of fishing in traditional medicine
• The best fishing destinations for a romantic getaway
• The impact of fishing on aquatic plants
• The benefits of fishing for personal growth
• The role of fishing in cultural celebrations
• The impact of fishing on bird populations
• The best fishing techniques for catching fish in different weather conditions
• The benefits of fishing for team bonding
• The impact of fishing on aquatic insects
• The role of fishing in disaster preparedness
• The best fishing destinations for a weekend getaway
• The impact of fishing on freshwater ecosystems
• The benefits of fishing for mental resilience
• The role of fishing in historical events
• The impact of fishing on amphibian populations
• The best fishing techniques for catching fish in different types of water bodies
• The benefits of fishing for personal fulfillment
• The impact of fishing on reptile populations
• The role of fishing in religious ceremonies
• The impact of fishing on mammal populations
• The best fishing destinations for a budget-friendly trip
• The benefits of fishing for social connection
• The impact of fishing on invertebrate populations
• The role of fishing in cultural preservation
• The impact of fishing on plant populations
• The best fishing techniques for catching fish in different types of habitats
• The benefits of fishing for environmental awareness
• The role of fishing in historical preservation
• The impact of fishing on aquatic ecosystems
• The benefits of fishing for mental well-being
• The impact of fishing on aquatic food chains
• The role of fishing in community building
• The impact of fishing on aquatic biodiversity

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Fishing as a livelihood, a way of life, or just a job: considering the complexity of “fishing communities” in research and policy

• Original Research
• Published: 10 August 2022
• Volume 33 , pages 265–280, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

• Claudia E. Delgado-Ramírez 1 ,
• Yoshitaka Ota 2 &
• Andrés M. Cisneros-Montemayor   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4132-5317 3  

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In the scientific literature on fisheries, the concept of community is often used broadly to indicate a place-based group whose members are dedicated to fisheries and have relatively homogeneous economic, social, and cultural interests. However, this categorical perspective to scope a “fishing community” is not necessarily an insightful approach to explore diverse social relationships with the marine environment, fishwork, and management in a practical context, and risks mismatches with science-based recommendations for management and policy. Drawing from ethnographic work, we highlight different historical and cultural dynamics from four case studies from fisheries in northwest Mexico. We identify key factors that help contextualize fishwork relationships, related to the importance of fishing practices on worldviews, daily routines, and income. These are used to derive three configurations (livelihood, way of life, and job) that describe and give analytical content to the notion of these fishing communities. Our use of a typology is not intended to generalize them or provide universal categories, but rather to convey to a broad range of fisheries scientists the importance of considering social contexts in the places in which we work and learn, and a set of guiding questions that may help in this regard. Contextualizing the importance of historical and cultural factors in scoping community units beyond occupational or geographical characteristics is essential for identifying and addressing (in)equitable processes and outcomes in fisheries sectors, research, and management.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge support from the Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus Center at EarthLab, University of Washington. We thank Dr. Pedro González-Espinosa for his help preparing Figure 1 .

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School of Anthropology and History of Northern Mexico, National Institute of Anthropology and History, Chihuahua, Mexico

Claudia E. Delgado-Ramírez

Ocean Nexus, School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, University of Washington, Seattle, USA

Yoshitaka Ota

Ocean Nexus, School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada

Andrés M. Cisneros-Montemayor

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All authors contributed to the Conceptualization, Formal Analysis, and Writing of the Original and Revised Manuscript; CEDR performed the Investigation; AMCM and YO contributed to Supervision, Project Administration, and Funding Acquisition.

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Correspondence to Andrés M. Cisneros-Montemayor .

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Delgado-Ramírez, C.E., Ota, Y. & Cisneros-Montemayor, A.M. Fishing as a livelihood, a way of life, or just a job: considering the complexity of “fishing communities” in research and policy. Rev Fish Biol Fisheries 33 , 265–280 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11160-022-09721-y

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Received : 06 February 2022

Accepted : 20 July 2022

Published : 10 August 2022

Issue Date : March 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11160-022-09721-y

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EDITORIAL article

Editorial: fishing in the time of covid-19: effects on fishing activities, resources, and marine ecosystems.

• 1 Laboratory of Experimental Ecology and Aquaculture, Department of Biology, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy
• 2 National Inter-University Consortium for Marine Sciences (CoNISMa), Rome, Italy
• 3 Faculty of Business Administration and Management, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
• 4 EqualSea Lab-Cross-Research in Environmental Technologies (CRETUS), Department of Applied Economics, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
• 5 National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics—OGS, Trieste, Italy

Editorial on the Research Topic Fishing in the time of COVID-19: Effects on fishing activities, resources, and marine ecosystems

The COVID-19 pandemic represented an unplanned global shock with serious impacts on the worldwide economy and human health that affected the fisheries sector with social, economic, and ecological consequences that have yet to be fully assessed. How COVID-19 impacted the activity of fishing fleets and how it reverberated on the behavior of fishers emerged as questions for fisheries and social scientists, national governments, the fisheries sector and international agencies (e.g. FAO, World Bank, etc.). The dynamics of global fisheries occurring in this exceptional situation included a series of reactions and adaptations that involved the whole sector, from fishers at sea to the whole supply chain and represent a baseline source of knowledge on fisher’s behavior. The analysis of such reactions and adaptations can provide insights both for the set-up of more effective management strategies and for future social-ecological crises. The objective of this Research Topic was to collect a series of contributions documenting, analyzing, and quantifying the effects of COVID-19 on the fisheries sector. Overall, the Research Topic grouped nine original articles that provide an overview of the effects of the pandemic (and associated restrictions) worldwide.

This Research Topic includes scientific contributions which document the effects of the pandemic and associated restrictions on the activity of fleets in different areas of the world, both during the lockdown period (January-March 2020) and in the months thereafter, encompassing both small-scale and recreational fisheries. Effects were documented through the analysis of different data sources including satellite data (VMS, AIS, SAR), landings (catch) and market data, economic indicators, questionnaires as well as state-of-the-art approach based on Synthetic-Aperture Radar (SAR) images.

With regard to small-scale/recreational fisheries, the four studies carried out in different parts of the world ( Macusi et al., Pita et al. , Hook et al. and Bolognini et al. ) have shown a widespread and general decrease in activities, with great economic but also psychological consequences for the communities concerned. In the first contribution of the Research Topic, Macusi et al. , assessed the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the catch per unit effort (CPUE) of small-scale fishers in the Philippines. The authors found that the impacts of COVID-19 restrictions on fishers and their families were high due to the lockdown policy imposed in the fishing villages during the earlier phases of restrictions by the government. The study also evidenced a lack of mobility, food inadequacy, travel restrictions and their children’s education for the fishers and their families. Pita et al. presented the result of an international research effort to understand the main impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on marine recreational fishing, based on consultations with experts from 16 countries and documented a worldwide reduction in marine recreational fishing activity. Hook et al. documented the impacts of COVID-19 on sea anglers in the United Kingdom, reporting negative effects for marine recreational fisheries and, consequently, negative effects for participation, effort, physical activity and well-being. Bolognini et al. provided a preliminary assessment of the consistency of marine recreational fishing in a case study from the Mediterranean Sea (Italy), using the COVID-19 pandemic as one of the most unique opportunities to better understand the social phenomenon of this fishing sector and its repercussions on the environment.

With regard to the professional fisheries, the five studies included in this Research Topic have shown both a reduction in activity during the lockdown period, but also a rapid and strong recovery in the summer of 2020, with consequences for resources yet to be assessed. Russo et al. analyzed how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the fishing activities in the Northern Adriatic Sea (Central Mediterranean Sea), documenting a strong reduction in fishing effort, landings, and profits for several fleets. Declines ranged from −36% of landings for the pelagic trawling fishery, to an −85% decline in profit for the small bottom otter trawl fishery during the lockdown period. Plagányi et al. summarized the impacts of COVID-19 on a tropical lobster fishery’s harvest strategy and related supply chain to inform on potential adaptation strategies. Villasante et al. developed a rapid assessment of the COVID-19 impact on the Galician (NW Spain) seafood sector, one of the most important fishing regions in the world. Their results demonstrated that the impacts were diverse. While the seafood sectors (fisheries and aquaculture) and trade were disrupted by abrupt shifts in demand, supply, and limitations on the movement of people and goods, the canned production sector and the imports and exports of prepared and preserved seafood products followed an increasing trend during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, Russo et al. quantified the effects of the COVID-19 shock on the large fishery operated by the Italian fleet of bottom otter trawlers in the Mediterranean Sea, demonstrating that the consequences of the pandemic have been highly varied. Despite a marked overall reduction in activity in the first semester of 2020, in some cases the strategies adopted by Italian fishers and the commercial network linked to their activity have significantly reduced the impact of the pandemic emergency measures and taken back catch and effort to levels similar to those of previous years. In addition, they suggested that when fishing activities restarted the effort increased on coastal regions characterized by a greater abundance of resources and longer effective fishing times. Pita et al. used SAR images, a state-of-the-art approach, to assess human activities at sea and reveal the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on fishing activities in French Mediterranean waters. The analysis documented that ship frequentation remained at the same level during the most severe lockdown period whereas, similarly to what described by Russo et al. , fishing activity increased later in the pandemic similar to the summer peak experienced in previous years. The five papers documenting the impact of the COVID -19 pandemic on commercial fisheries examined not only the direct impact on fleets, but also how that impact affected the entire supply chain. Several positive adaptive strategies emerged to deal with the Covid-19 impacts: Proximity to markets, investment in domestic or nearby supply chains and the development of new technological innovations to help avoid food shortages and mitigated the economic consequences for the sector in different areas, especially in the Mediterranean Sea ( Villasante et al., Russo et al. ).

In summary, the papers in this Research Topic document quite diverse impacts on the fisheries sector related to the pandemic. Most papers document that the pandemic had a massive domino effect on all categories of fishers, from amateurs to professional fishers, through its direct and indirect (restriction-related) impacts, resulting in various negative consequences in terms of psychological, social, production, and nutritional impacts ( Figure 1 ). The negative domino effect was mitigated in very specific cases where the pandemic brought benefits. For example, the close relationship between fishers and the market chain facilitated the adaptation and adoption of local countermeasures to a generally negative situation in Italy. In addition, the negative impact of the pandemic on the production sector boosted the canned fish industry. Overall, given the complexity of the environment-fishery-market system, it is an aspect that short-term shocks such as the pandemic can lead to a general negative impact, but it does not affect all parts of the system: some well-structured parts (from production to market) can better withstand the short-term shock.

Figure 1 Representation of the domino effect triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and affecting first all fisheries sectors and then, progressively, the food chain and the economic and social communities associated with fisheries.

Author contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Keywords: COVID-19, fisheries, socio-economics, effort, fishing

Citation: Russo T, Villasante S and Libralato S (2022) Editorial: Fishing in the time of COVID-19: Effects on fishing activities, resources, and marine ecosystems. Front. Mar. Sci. 9:1046385. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2022.1046385

Received: 16 September 2022; Accepted: 17 October 2022; Published: 26 October 2022.

Edited and Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2022 Russo, Villasante and Libralato. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Tommaso Russo, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Studies In Success: The Science Of Fishing & Catching

How science relates to improvements and advances in fishing technique.

According to Merriam-Webster, science “represents knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation.” In a literal sense, science is a knowledge-based discipline, part skill, and part art. And you could say the same about fishing, especially since the paths of science and fishing often cross.

While we may feel a sense of nostalgia for the ‘good old days’ of a cane pole and a can of worms, there is no escaping the fact that today’s anglers depend as much on science and technology as they do on their acquired fishing skills. The reality is that we encounter science at every phase of the game: rods manufactured from carbon fibers and space-aged nano resins, titanium reels, synthetic braided lines designed for diverse applications, and even “intelligent” artificial lures that appeal to all of a fish’s senses. Not to mention electronics that can figuratively pinpoint a sea lice on the snout of a striped bass swimming in 100 feet of water.

Science also helps explain the behaviors of bait and baitfish and the inter-relationship of other critical factors like tides, weather, and water quality. And consider for a moment professional freshwater bass fishermen. They utilize more powerful technology than what NASA employed during the first moon launch! And most of today’s tournament anglers feel that they relinquish a competitive advantage if they don’t fully embrace these advances in fishing technology.

The Doctor’s Perspective

Dr. Dave Ross is a world-renowned oceanographer and a Senior Scientist Emeritus at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. He has authored numerous scientific textbooks, and he also wrote, The Fisherman’s Ocean: How Marine Science Can Help You Find And Catch More Fish. In his book, Dr. Ross describes marine environments and ecosystems and the behavior of saltwater fish, and he further explores the factors that stimulate fish to act in specific ways; how they hear, smell, taste, and see, and how that translates to actions and responses. He also details how they migrate, where they amass; and how they travel with currents and tides.

As Dr. Ross explains, “Fish, to me, are very complex creatures, many having some senses that exceed ours in ability. For example, most fish can detect a scent a thousand times better than a dog. The ocean is very noisy, but most fish can still distinguish and detect sounds from bait or predators. Using and knowing scientific information about fish and their environment may help you to find and hook more fish. Still, even if it doesn’t, it should make your time on the water more enjoyable and make you appreciate fish even more.”

Also an accomplished angler, Dr. Ross says fish have remarkable sensory mechanisms evolved to detect and distinguish motion, noise, color, and scent. When translating those traits into useable fishing knowledge, he suggests that an artificial lure’s ability to imitate sick or dying prey is a critical design element in getting fish’s attention. He also feels that it’s essential for an angler to understand the physiology and behaviors of the gamefish they pursue and of the bait as well.

While replicating anatomical accuracy in an artificial bait is not critical, Dr. Ross suggests that understanding the impact of how a fish sees, hears, and detects scent is of utmost importance to anglers.

Record Holder’s Advice

Many of today’s finest anglers have embraced science to up their game; take, for example, Greg Myerson, the current IGFA all-tackle striped bass world record holder. His bass of 81.88 pounds is indeed a magnificent specimen and an extraordinary fish in a long line of gargantuan stripers caught by one of the most prolific big bass experts fishing today.  Consistency of this magnitude only happens through hard work, time spent, and an understanding of big bass habits and physiology.

Among all the strategies and tactics Myerson employs to target giant stripers, his practice of applying scientific insights to his approach helps stack the deck in his favor. He believes that we must appeal to all the senses of large bass.  “I would tell anglers, that in my experience, fish hunt in this order: sound first; smell second, and sight third, using their eyes only for the final attack,” Myerson said.  So what does this all have to do with him catching monster striped bass? Myerson depends on sound technology as much as he does his rod and reel and has taken that science to the point of using and patenting certain sounds made by prey that striped bass feed on. He has also extended the decibel levels and frequencies of those sounds to his lures, baits, and terminal gear since he also believes that bass can distinguish between the sounds of different prey.

Greg’s methods are rooted in sound science and fish anatomy; his results speak for themselves. Myerson offered sage advice regarding lure selection for catching large fish: “Big fish are much harder to fool. You need the most natural presentations. The best size lines and fluorocarbons for the clarity of the water. The right twitches and bumps and Color schemes. But most importantly, the lure has to sound like something the fish recognize as food. Not just noise, they will be less likely to strike something that they don’t understand as food. The 20’s might hit them, but not 60-plus-pounders that have been around the block a few times!”

A Natural Sense

Fish “smell” via chemical reception; meaning fish can detect and distinguish chemicals, often in minute quantities. Fish can taste through taste buds located in the mouth, lips, tongue and face. Targeting a fish’s senses of smell and taste is at the forefront of science-based lure design. While researching an article on smart baits and lures, I had the opportunity to interview John Prochnow, Product Development Director at Pure Fishing and one of the innovators behind their Gulp line of soft baits and scent baths. “Our baits target and stimulate all response sections within fish and are designed to maximize scent, flavor, texture, action, vibration, and cosmetic appeal such as color and profile,” said Prochnow, adding “Under normal conditions, when fish are in a somewhat neutral or feeding mode, it’s important for all those artificial elements to work in concert.”

According to Prochnow there are conditions when one or more of those elements might prevail. “For example, in muddy or dingy water, a bait that appeals to a fish’s ability to sense scent and vibration is most effective; in clear water, appealing to visual acuity is key,” he said, adding “Flavor and texture tend to be the last elements put into play since, at that point, a fish has already been attracted to the artificial bait.”

One critical characteristic of effective artificial baits is an inherent capacity to mimic live or injured and vulnerable prey. All artificial lures are, in essence, deceptive imposters of live prey. Artificial baits with high “imposter quotients” are likely to draw more interest and, therefore, more strikes. Learn how fish react to the environment through their network of senses, and you will learn how to motivate them better to accept your artificial offerings.

Chris Paparo, manager of Stony Brook University’s Marine Research Laboratory, does exactly that. In addition to holding a degree in marine biology, Paparo, a senior aquarist and diver is also known as the Fish Guy for his extensive knowledge of fish species and the marine environments in the Northeast. As an avid angler, Chris’ career and recreational fishing pursuits often intersect. And as a diver and marine photographer, Paparo regularly observes fish up close in their natural habitat. His observations have led to changes in the way he fishes.

“Having a better understanding of fish behavior through study and observation has allowed me to think more like a fish. Knowing how a fish might react under certain circumstances (i.e., tide, current, time of day, etc.) gives me an edge in knowing not only what lure or bait to use but how to properly apply it,” Paparo told me. “We are often taught various fishing techniques without ever fully understanding why those methods work. For example, when targeting fluke, it’s best to fish along sandbars. Why is this so? As an ambush predator, fluke will lie on the bottom, facing into the current while waiting for baitfish to be swept over the bar. As a diver, I have seen fluke work the slope of a sandbar. With this knowledge, I know where to present my lure to increase the odds that it will flutter past the mouth of a hungry fluke.”

His observations have also improved his blackfishing. “Blackfish are tied to structure, but not all pieces of the wreck will hold fish all the time. During slow water, blackfish will cruise the wreck looking for prey. As currents increase, they typically take shelter behind large objects and wait for food to come to them. When currents are strong, I try to get my rig to drift behind objects such as pilings or boulders where the big tautog are waiting out of the tide.” This marriage of scientific observation with angling technique can only lead to greater fishing success. The wise angler continually observes the environment, baitfish, and gamefish behavior to understand critical interrelationships and then applies that knowledge to their fishing tactics.

Innovations In Design

Today’s leading lure manufacturers engineer their lures with built-in “intelligence” that appeals to the entire spectrum of fish senses. Similarly, tackle manufacturers use highly sophisticated materials to create the strongest, lightest, and most responsive fishing rods ever made. Reels are engineered with compounds that are more advanced than those used in the aircraft industry. The realistic swimming action of artificial baits results from a balanced relationship between shape, length, and the lure’s opposing forces against water. To achieve this, lure designers study how fish move and how they propel themselves through the water.

Another critical element is shape and balance, which must work in concert. The turbulence created by that balance of dimensions influences water pressure and causes the bait to move in a lifelike manner. The hardest thing for a lure manufacturer to replicate is what predatory fish feel and sense when stimulated by a particular bait. The astute angler absorbs this kind of information from all sources.

Tackle manufacturers employ a variety of design innovations to attract fish scientifically: ribbed and segmented lures that emit vibrations; paints that change color; hydrodynamic shapes that move like actual baitfish; light reflection to stimulate sight responses; frequency tuned sound devices; and even lures equipped with light-emitting capabilities that generate colors specific to the depths fished.

As science engages in its perpetual quest for change and improvement, the fishing industry will continue to benefit from those advancements, whether old science or new, understanding the impact on your fishing and embracing that science in your angling repertoire will have rewarding results.

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• Introduction

Fisheries literature is part of the larger scientific literature and is derived from basic research in related disciplines and applied research in fisheries. Scientific literature is the principal medium for communicating the results of scientific research and represents a permanent record of the collective achievements of the scientific community. It is composed of the individual "end products" of scientific research and continues to expand as new research builds on earlier research.

Scientific literature is divided into two basic categories - "primary" and "secondary". Publications that report the results of original scientific research constitute the "primary" literature and include journal papers, conference papers, monographic series, technical reports, theses, and dissertations. The "primary" literature is eventually compacted into "secondary" sources which synthesize and condense what is known on specific topics. These include reviews, monographs, textbooks, treatises, handbooks, and manuals.

Availability of scientific literature varies depending upon its publication format. Some formats are widely available, e.g., journal papers, while others have limited distribution and are difficult to identify and acquire. This "gray literature" commonly includes technical reports, theses, and dissertations.

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• Scientific Research/Publication Cycle

The following chart illustrates common steps involved in the scientific research process (inner circle), the dissemination of research results through the primary and secondary literature (outer circle), and the personal assimilation of this information resulting in new ideas and research (inner circle):

Fisheries Serials: Journals, Magazines, Monograhic Series

Fisheries serials can be grouped into the following three categories:

• Journals - regularly issued publications that contain papers reporting the results of scholarly research in the discipline
• Magazines & Newsletters - contain popular reports on developments in the discipline
• Monographic Series - irregularly issued publications that in most cases contain the results of scholarly research

The research paper published in a scientific journal represents the most important "primary" source of information for the fisheries scientist and manager. Papers published in journals generally go through a "peer review" process before acceptance and publication. Seventy-five percent of the fisheries research literature is published in this format.To find fisheries journals ranked by impact see SCImago Journal & Country Rank  or Eigenfactor.org - Ranking and Mapping Scientific Knowledge .

Another thing to note is that databases and cited literature typically abbreviate journal titles. Databases can be used to find individual research papers by author, subject, taxonomic category, habitat, time period, chemical compound, or geographic area. In addition many journal publisher websites now maintain a searchable database of articles that have been published in their journals.

The following list contains many of the print and online journals available which publish research of interest to fisheries scientists and managers.

Magazines and Newsletters

Articles appearing in these publications tend to be popular in format and scope. They may contain news and perspectives of professional societies and environmental organizations, report on research published in scholarly journals, report on environmental problems and new political initiatives, or contain articles aimed at the layperson.

Monographic Series

While most fisheries research is published in journals, perhaps 10% is published as individual issues of monographic series. Longer contributions resulting from scientific research are often published in this format. Monographic series typically have the following characteristics:

• They are published by government agencies, major universities or professional organizations.
• Individual issues are collectively published in a continuing series which has a distinctive name. Typical names include Bulletin, Special Report, Special Paper, Technical Report, and Technical Paper.
• Individual issues in the series are consecutively numbered, e.g. Technical Paper No. 36.
• Each issue has a distinctive author and title.
• There is no regular publication schedule in contrast to a journal.
• Individual issues contain the completed results of a single research project.
• Individual issues range from several pages to several hundred pages.

A typical example is:

Serns, S.L.(a) 1984. An 8-Inch Length Limit on Smallmouth Bass: Effects on the Sport Fisheries and Populations of Smallmouth Bass and Yellow Perch in Nebish Lake, Wisconsin(b). Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources(c) Technical Bulletin(d) No. 148(e).  where a=individual author; b=individual title; c=series author; d=series title; e=series number

To locate monographic series in the Library you need to consult the following two sources:

• For federal and California State agency series use the catalogs and indexes listed in  Natural Resources Agency Government Documents and Reports .
• For all other monographic series use the Library's catalog, OneSearch. The key is to look for the series of which an individual issue is a part. You must look under either the series title (Technical Bulletin in the above example) or the sponsoring organization (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in the above example). In the above example there is no listing under the author "Serns" or the title "An 8-Inch..." since these are the author and title of the individual issue.

As with individual journal papers the  Finding Aticles tab in the Fisheries  Guide can be used to identify research published in this format.

The following monographic series of interest to fisheries are found in the regular bookstacks of the Library. Again, those published by federal and California state agencies are listed in  Natural Resources Agency Government Documents and Reports  and are physically located in the separate Documents Collection.

• Alaska Department of Fish & Game
• Special Publication Series
• Canadian Bulletin of Fisheries & Aquatic Sciences
• Canadian Manuscript Report of Fisheries & Aquatic Sciences
• Canadian Technical Report of Fisheries & Aquatic Sciences
• Division Report
• Outdoor Facts: Fishery Information Leaflet
• Special Report
• Technical Publication
• EIFAC Technical Paper
• Special Scientific Report
• Folia Limnologica Scandinavica
• FAO Fisheries Circular
• FAO Fisheries Reports
• FAO Fisheries Technical Paper
• FAO Fisheries Synopsis
• Scotland Fisheries Research Report
• Fishery Investigations
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The outcome of graduate study conducted at universities is commonly a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation. In addition to the formal thesis or dissertation, research results are often communicated in other "primary" literature formats, such as the journal paper.

See  Theses and Dissertations  for how to find and acquire 1) HSU masters theses; and 2) theses and dissertations produced at other universities that are available in other libraries and on the Internet. In addition the following are specialized directories and databases to theses and dissertations in fisheries:

• Bibliography of Theses on Fishery Biology and its Supplement (QL 615 S66) Lists approximately 3,000 fisheries theses and dissertations completed through 1971.
• California Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Research Unit Masters of Science Theses  Lists current and completed masters projects with links to the fulltext of completed master's theses.
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Papers presented at national and international conferences, symposia, and workshops are another source of "primary" scientific information in fisheries. For many of these meetings the presented papers are eventually published in a "proceedings" or "transactions" volume. Those available in the Library are listed in the OneSearch catalog under author (generally the name of the conference, individual editor or sponsoring organization) and title.

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• American Fisheries Society, Bonneville Chapter. Proceedings
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• International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. Collection Volume of Scientific Papers
• International Symposium on Regulated Rivers
• Marine Recreational Fisheries Symposium. Marine Recreational Fisheries
• National Shellfisheries Association. Proceedings (now Journal of Shellfish Research)
• North American Wildlife & Natural Resources Conference. Transactions
• Northwest Fish Culture Conference. Proceedings
• Southeastern Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies. Proceedings
• Symposium on Aquatic Toxicology. Aquatic Toxicology
• Western Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies. Proceedings
• Wildlife Society. Western Division. Transactions (formerly Cal-Neva Wildlife)
• World Mariculture Society. Proceedings (now Journal of the World Aquaculture Society)
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Monographs generally are not part of the "primary" literature of science, but rather are "secondary" sources of information. They may be either scholarly contributions or popularizations on specific topics. Through scholarly monographs the "primary" literature on specific topics is condensed, summarized or reviewed. Most include references back to the "primary" literature. They may take the format of textbooks, treatises, taxonomic works, or a multitude of reference works, such as encyclopedias or handbooks. Monographs are listed in the Library catalog, OneSearch. For guidance in use of the HSU Library Catalog and other library catalogs see  Finding Books on Fish and Fisheries .

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Content Attribution

Some of the content of this page was created in another format by Robert Sathrum, HSU Librarian, retired 06/2013. 

The Issue of Overfishing in the United States

See the remediation.

My paper is addressed towards an audience of environmentalists; it is essential that environmentalists are taught about overfishing so they can teach others and gain support for the movement to end overfishing. They are the group that is dedicated to help make the Earth a healthier place. It is necessary for this audience to read this paper because it will aid them in gaining knowledge on overfishing, which too often receives scant attention compared to climate change. In addition, environmentalists tend to have strong views on topics related to saving the Earth. Thus, if more environmentalists become aware of the exigence of the issue, more effort may be used to solve the problem. My secondary audience includes U.S. residents, ages 16 and above, who are also willing to join in on the efforts to help combat this issue. Even though United States is one of the nations that has done the most towards stopping the issue of overfishing, it is not enough. With this information, I believe that my audience will try to combat overfishing by taking hands-on approaches such as habitat restoration.

My introduction to habitat restoration left me sweating and exhausted. In 2017 I traveled down the East Coast in three minivans on a mission trip to Georgia with sixteen other people from my church. We were assigned to a variety of service projects during our week and a half stay, ranging from fixing homes for veterans to volunteering at an oyster restoration project. The latter was my favorite. I did not really understand the importance of what I was doing at the time, but I enjoyed the camaraderie and the exercise despite shoveling oyster shells for what it seemed like an endless amount of time. Because the work was so tiring, we shifted off our jobs to others in an assembly line. I went from shoveling the oyster shells to dumping them on tables, filling up bags with the shells, tying knots, and throwing them over a fence into a pile with hundreds of other filled bags. I found out later that we were helping to repopulate seafood, save the environment by filtering the water, and restore some people’s livelihoods by protecting their jobs. And we were only a tiny piece in a huge East Coast operation. My experience led me to investigate the issue of overfishing and to understand how much it demands our attention.

Overfishing is defined as the taking of fish at too high of a rate for the species to be replenished the next year. In the past, fisheries did not consider their effects on fish populations and the environment, which led to many populations getting overfished as fishermen exceeded environmental limits to gain a greater profit. The first documented case of overfishing was in the 1800s when people realized that whale blubber could be used to create oil for their lamps. This created a huge burst of fishing for whales to the point of endangerment (Palliser 10). Even after this instance, Americans still overfished many species because of their desire to gain more wealth. Another instance is George’s Bank’s Haddock stocks, which were overfished for decades before the 1990s, as a result of them being a necessity for New England fishermen. These stocks were the number one source of profit for New England fisheries, and they were generating over 400 million pounds of fish each year. This continuing trend put a huge strain on the George’s Bank stock, which led to the species yield reaching a record low--leading the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to name the species officially collapsed in the 1990s (Brodziak et al. 123).

Due to these increasingly harmful instances of overfishing, a method of monitoring fish stocks was developed globally called the maximum sustainable yield (MSY). The MSY is the absolute maximum harvest of fish that should be taken annually from a certain population of fish for the species to regenerate to the previous amount or higher for the next year, yet many people see it as a goal rather than a limit. Because this did not work to end overfishing, the United States passed the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSFCM) in 1976 to initiate an annual catch limit for fisheries. This act also extended U.S jurisdiction, which required that foreign ships follow the conservation laws (Powell, 2019). In 1976 before the MSFCM was passed, foreign ships were catching 10 times as much as the US fishermen, which greatly contributed to the overfishing of the entire area. Just after one year of the act passing, the United States started creating more fishing vessels to catch fish in this area since foreign competitors left and did not want to abide by the regulations. By 1992, the entire area was being controlled with U.S. vessels following strict regulations, and all foreign vessels were gone, choosing to fish in an unregulated area instead (Powell 2019). This proved to be beneficial because in 2016, only 8% out of the 390 annual catch limits were exceeded. However, even with maximum sustainable yields and the catch limits, the world’s total fishing yield continued to decrease after it reached the highest yield in 1989 of about 90 million tons (“Overfishing”).  Considering overfishing is not the only problem leading to decreased yields, establishing a strict MSY will not be enough by itself to accomplish reaching the supply of fish we once had.

The supply of fish continues to decrease over time, and this has a huge impact on many people within the United States. The average American eats 15.5 pounds of fish annually, which is a number that increases each year (“Americans”). Fish is a huge staple throughout America, and the declining fish yields present a problem for most people that enjoy fish as a staple in their diets and others for whom fish is a necessity to include because of allergies or religious reasons. It is not just those who enjoy fish that this issue impacts, but it also the fishermen in the US that rely on fish to provide for their families. Coastal fisheries support about 1.8 million jobs nationally, but this number is declining because the lowering ability for fishermen to make a living off the smaller fish populations.

In this paper I will show that overfishing is an issue that needs to be addressed because of the likelihood of great harm to fish populations, those who rely on fishing as an occupation, and all who benefit from fish being a part of their diet. First, I will address how bycatch is one reason why overfishing has occurred. Secondly, I examine the negative impacts of the direct loss of fish upon consumers and fishermen. Then I tie in information about how the US fishermen are impacted negatively when foreign competitors are constantly overfishing, making it harder for Americans to sell their fish. Some elected representatives representing land-locked states may not be convinced that this issue of overfishing is important enough for them to address, and therefore I examine information as to show how this issue effects more than just coastal environments. Although prior laws have been passed to combat overfishing, they have not solved the problem. I conclude by offering a way for non-environmentalists to assist by actively rebuilding habitats and eating sustainably.

The most obvious effect of overfishing that proves change is needed is the direct loss of fish from aquatic ecosystems. Nearly 90% of global marine fish are overfished or fully fished, meaning that the stocks are being fished at their MSY or even more (Shaver and Yozell 6). Commercial overfishing especially has impacted such a large species of fish in the oceans, with the result being that only a small percentage of species can be labeled as healthy stocks. A primary reason for this catastrophe is bycatch. Bycatch is most commonly defined as the accidental capture of a non-targeted species, but it can also include species that were hit by fishing boats, or animals that were entangled by fishing nets, even if they managed to escape (Read et al. 164). Bycatch presents a huge problem of overfishing to marine animals, damaging the aquatic ecosystems. In fact, bycatch is the greatest threat to whales, dolphins, and turtles, especially the species of Albatrosses and many species of turtles, who even face extinction as a result of frequently being caught as bycatch (Read et al. 164). To emphasize the extent of how many whales get impacted by bycatch, it is important to note that 70% of North Atlantic Right whales have been entangled at least once in their lives, and it impairs their ability to live (Read et al. 167). When whales are impacted by bycatch, so is the plankton population which can overpopulate and harm other types of fish and aquatic plant life that rely indirectly on the whales. To some extent it does not matter if bycatch is purposeful because the damage is still being done.

Overfishing jeopardizes the ability of the U.S. consumers to take advantage of the health benefits offered by fish. It has been determined that fish are a healthier source of protein compared to red meat. For instance, a three-ounce serving of beef can reach up to 186 calories with more fats (Arnarson). Meanwhile, a three-ounce serving of flounder can be as low as 60 calories with other minerals such as iron zinc and potassium (“Fish”). In fact, the US Department of Health and Human Services and the USDA publish the “Dietary guidelines” every five years, in which they recommended that Americans should double their intake of seafood (Nylen 759). In the United States, and even throughout the word, the middle class has been growing exponentially, which means that more people are able to afford a wider variety of foods, which includes the healthier option of fish (Shaver and Yozell 10). This increasing demand for fish can be fulfilled in a sustainable way, but currently these sustainable practices are not put into play, which will cause negative effects for humans and the fish. For example, the USDA creates a “Choose My Plate” website. It makes seafood recommendations for good sources of protein, yet it ignores the fact that their list includes recommendations for fish that are under intense fishing pressure (Nylen 762). We will soon reach a point when our demand is too high, and the stock populations are too low for our demands for fish to be met.

But the direct loss of fish is not the only negative impact of overfishing, and consumers are not the only people affected. A second impact of overfishing that proves its urgency is its effect on the jobs of fishermen. Because many of the fish eaten in the United States are imported, a large strain is placed on US fishermen to maintain enough sales to provide for their families throughout the year. Consider the shrimpers in North Carolina, which used to be the most profitable state among the Southern Shrimp Alliance Members in 2000. But, due to the growing supply of imported shrimp, there has been a steady decline of about 50% in shrimp prices for North Carolina (Andreatta and Parlier 182). As overfishing increases abroad, it produces a highly negative impact on the economy of the US by making it harder to live as a US fisherman. A huge part of this is due to illegal dumping of shrimp into the US by Thailand, China, Vietnam, and India (Shaver and Yozell 11). When these countries dump such large amounts of shrimp into the US, their shrimp tends to have lower costs because of their ability to sell in bulk.

Foreign overfishing creates a burdensome effect on fishermen by increasing the difficulty for US fishermen to sell their catch. For instance, fishing had always been a huge part of Carteret County in North Carolina in terms of occupation. Up until the 1990s, a commercial fisherman could have provided comfortably for their family on a full-time job (Andreatta and Parlier 180). This is no longer the case, which can be shown through the fact that there has been a 50% decline in fishermen in Carteret County from 1999 to 2006. With the increasing regulations within the US such as the annual yield limits set by the Stevens-Magnusson Act in combination with the foreign competition, commercial fishermen in Carteret County are being marginalized.

Another example of foreign overfishing affecting US fishermen is in Gloucester Massachusetts, where a catch-share management regulation was passed, limiting the amount of fish that could be legally caught, but exceptions were granted that created additional hurdles beyond the regulation. Under this policy, fishermen could buy “shares” of each other’s total allowable catch, presenting a problem for smaller fishermen who might not process enough capital to buy other’s shares (“Overfishing is”). Dave Marciano was one such fishermen. He fished commercially in Gloucester for three decades until he was forced to sell his fishing permit because the catch-share program became too expensive for him to participate in (“Overfishing is”).

Another way in which overfishing and even policies designed to combat overfishing harm U.S. commercial fishermen is by forcing fishermen to adapt to seasonal fluctuations of species. For example, in the South during January, the best species for commercial fishing are Specks and Sunshine, but as the calendar transitions to March, the best species to fish include Bass and Bluegill (“Seasonal”). The cost of production for multiple species surpasses the profits that these fishermen make because the overfishing in other countries provides American consumers with cheaper fish. Most consumers will not spend the extra cost to purchase fish from the US, thereby forcing many US fishermen out of business.

It is not just U.S. policies that have impaired American fishermen’s success. International policies, which are not as restrictive as the U.S. would have liked, also impair American fishermen’s livelihoods. One example is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), passed in 1994, which stated that member nations had exclusive jurisdiction up to 12 nautical miles outside each coastal state. The US refused to sign it in 1976 because their own Magnuson-Stevens Act, their jurisdiction extended exclusive jurisdiction 200 nautical miles (“The Law”). The US did not want to risk having their jurisdiction shortened as a result of an international agreement.

Pirate fishing is an additional source of global political tension in U.S. fisheries. Pirate fishing refers to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, and it is a huge problem worldwide. Since so much of the fish sold in the United States is imported, the US is especially vulnerable to having IUU fish imported; it was estimated that 25 to 30% of wild-caught seafood imported in the United States was illegally caught (Willette 25).

The misuse and overuse of specific fishing techniques have also contributed largely to overfishing. Dredging and trawling are two of the most harmful. A prime example of the former, and its consequences, is occurring in the Chesapeake Bay. The collapse of eastern oysters in the Bay is one of the largest declines of documented marine species, and the primary cause is overfishing. In the 1700s, a traveler exclaimed how populous oysters were in the Chesapeake Bay. There were so many that the ships had to carefully navigate through them (Wilberg et al. 131). These oysters became a resource that was essential to the success of fisheries, to the extent that Maryland had the largest fishery in the United States in the late 1800s because of the abundance of oysters (Wilberg et al. 131). But when fisheries obtain so many oysters at such high of a rate, oyster fishing no longer is sustainable, and it leads to population depletion. Due to excessive overfishing caused by fishermen not thinking about the future, the oyster harvests rapidly declined during the early 1900s. Ever since then, oysters have remained at low levels and have not been able to make large recoveries (Wilberg et al. 132). The reasons that this overfishing occurred was because of the fishing technique called dredging. Dredging is a method for fishing that has a large rake-like object that is towed along the bottom of the seafloor (Palliser 11). This is a common method for harvesting oysters because it smashes the oyster beds, allowing the oysters to break off and be captured. Therefore, not only is this directly depleting the population of the oysters through fishing, it is also destroying the habitats. The dredges remove shells and live oysters from their compact oyster beds. This turns more of the beds into sediment, which makes it much harder for oyster species to repopulate when so much of their habitat has already been destroyed. A study found that dredging for only two hours can reduce reef height by six centimeters (Wilberg et al. 141). Considering that fisheries are harvesting oysters for much longer than this, the environmental damage adds up to create a drastically negative effect on the species’ ability to repopulate the following years. Dredging for oysters is not the only fishing technique that hurts the environment; another such technique is trawling. Trawling drags a net along the bottom of the seafloor, opposed to dredging which tows a metal rake (Palliser 11). Trawling disturbs the habitats of various fish because as it runs along the sea floor to catch the fish, it disrupts any vegetation it comes across, such as grass, seaweed, or even coral (Palliser 11). Trawling and dredging are employed liberally because they capture as much seafood as possible with minimal effort. Sadly, dredging and trawling are two fishing techniques that result in overfishing.

Although recreational fishing a small-scale contributor to overfishing, it can impact the environment in harmful ways. One such way is the overfishing of predator populations. A case study conducted in Cape Cod addresses that once the predator populations were overfished via recreational fishing, it led to the increased die-off of shoreline vegetation on the marsh (Altieri et al. 1402). In other words, recreational fishermen, also known as anglers, overharvested the fish from the top of the food chain, which resulted in a dramatic increase of the herbivorous crab, Sesarma (Altieri et al. 1402). Without predators, the Sesarma were free to repopulate and eat freely, which resulted in the die-off of the shorelines. This destruction of the salt marshes is extremely harmful to the environment because salt marshes provide a lot of beneficial factors for humans, animals, and ecosystem health. For instance, salt marshes act as a buffer from shoreline erosion and they are homes to a variety of food sources such as shrimp and finfish (US Department). The Cape Cod study is one of many that suggest overfishing, including recreational fishing, can have devastating consequences.

Despite all the evidence showing how urgent of an issue overfishing is, not all people agree. Steve Murawski, a fisheries biologist and marine ecologist at the University of South Florida, argues that overfishing is no longer a danger. He strictly states, “For the first time in at least a century, US fishermen are not taking too much of any species from the sea” (“Overfishing is”). Murawski claims that the Gulf of Maine cod have recovered even though fishermen were technically overfishing still.  He has watched the Magnuson-Stevens Act in New England be enforced, which imposes strict catch limits. Therefore, he believes that the right levels of fishing have been hit (“Overfishing is”). Just because management techniques applied in one region (in this case, New England) have been successful does not mean that they will be successful elsewhere even if they are applied. A report published in 2013 disputes Murawski’s 2011 claim that overfishing would no longer be a problem. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), over 70% of the world’s fish species are fully overfished or drained, and this overfishing trend is continuing. The FAO also reports that illegal fishing is increasing, which also shows signs that undocumented overfishing has continued (Nuttall).

One specific solution that could be implemented on local, national, and global scales--and is particularly beneficial--is habitat restoration. Coral restoration would be a great project to get involved in because it helps rejuvenate the habitats of fish and sea animals that rely on coral for their ecosystem to live in. Coral restoration can include growing coral in land-based nurseries or transporting coral from healthy to degraded reefs. When coral is rebuilt, it allows for more fish to repopulate because their habitats are improving, and, as a result, there is more livable space. This habitat restoration solution can also be enacted in bays where overfishing has caused the depletion of oysters and oyster beds. By restoring the beds, people can help to make bays healthier, while providing a habitat where oysters can repopulate. This was something that I was able to get involved with my church members by going on a mission trip for a couple of days. Volunteering, even for minimal time, for a restoration project could provide lasting benefits to that area.

 A case study on the habitat loss in the Upper Chesapeake Bay claims that the most effective strategy to rehabilitate oyster populations includes the focus on restoration activities (Wilberg et al. 141). By providing improved habitats for different sea animals, restoration projects can help to increase populations of these species. Higher populations would make it much more difficult for humans to overfish. So, if more people get involved in habitat restoration, it could help to provide better conditions for species to repopulate. An even easier solution that individuals can enact is to simply take into consideration which species of fish they are eating, where it is from, and how it is caught. The Monterey Bay Aquarium creates a consumer guide which places fish into one of three categories, “Best Choices”, “Good Alternatives”, and “Avoid” (“Consumer”). This helps people to pick seafood that is fished or farmed in a sustainable way, to help support a healthy aquatic ecosystem. If people decide to eat fish more sustainably, it could prevent the consumption of fish that are overfished or threatened. This would help to reduce overfishing by diverting consumer demand away from species that are at risk of exhaustion. I acknowledge that these ideas represent short-time solutions, but it is important for more of us to stay active in solving the issue on a local level while governmental and global legislation to stop overfishing is underway.

The issue of overfishing is often overlooked worldwide because other environmental issues, such as climate change and pollution, capture the global focus of scientists and activists; however, overfishing in the United States deserves our attention. What is being done to combat overfishing is not enough, and more people who care about the environment need to get involved with this cause and create change. It is time that we stop disregarding overfishing and do something to save the fish, our environment, and ourselves.

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“But It’s Just a Fish”: Understanding the Challenges of Applying the 3Rs in Laboratory Aquariums in the UK

Simple summary.

Fish are widely used in research and some species have become important model organisms in the biosciences. Despite their importance, their welfare has usually been less of a focus of public interest or regulatory attention than the welfare of more familiar terrestrial and mammalian laboratory animals; indeed, the use of fish in experiments has often been viewed as ethically preferable or even neutral. Adopting a social science perspective and qualitative methodology to address stakeholder understandings of the problem of laboratory fish welfare, this paper examines the underlying social factors and drivers that influence thinking, priorities and implementation of fish welfare initiatives and the 3Rs (Replacement, Reduction and Refinement) for fish. Illustrating the case with original stakeholder interviews and experience of participant observation in zebrafish facilities, this paper explores some key social factors influencing the take up of the 3Rs in this context. Our findings suggest the relevance of factors including ambient cultural perceptions of fish, disagreements about the evidence on fish pain and suffering, the language of regulators, and the experiences of scientists and technologists who develop and put the 3Rs into practice. The discussion is focused on the UK context, although the main themes will be pertinent around the world.

Adopting a social science perspective and qualitative methodology on the problem of laboratory fish welfare, this paper examines some underlying social factors and drivers that influence thinking, priorities and implementation of fish welfare initiatives and the 3Rs (Replacement, Reduction and Refinement) for fish. Drawing on original qualitative interviews with stakeholders, animal technologists and scientists who work with fish—especially zebrafish—to illustrate the case, this paper explores some key social factors influencing the take up of the 3Rs in this context. Our findings suggest the relevance of factors including ambient cultural perceptions of fish, disagreements about the evidence on fish pain and suffering, the discourse of regulators, and the experiences of scientists and animal technologists who develop and put the 3Rs into practice. The discussion is focused on the UK context, although the main themes will be pertinent around the world.

1. Introduction

The relevance of human-animal interactions, relationships and bonds to laboratory animal welfare, robust animal-dependent science and ethics is widely acknowledged by practitioners, e.g., [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ]. How these are embedded in and reflective of wider social processes, relations and structures is also increasingly a matter of interest to social scientists, historians and ethicists, many of whom are also concerned to better understand how such broader societal issues shape the implementation and development of public policy and associated ethical frameworks, e.g., [ 9 , 10 , 11 ], including the 3Rs [ 12 , 13 ]. There is also thriving literature on the role of public opinion concerning the use of laboratory animals, much of which illustrates an interest in how species differences can mediate social attitudes and potentially structure policy priorities, e.g., [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ]. The case of the use of fish in regulated scientific research is a good example of this, but has seldom before been addressed for some partial exceptions, see [ 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ]. Using the 3Rs as a point of entry, this paper adopts a qualitative social scientific perspective, highlighting social drivers that could be influencing thinking on, prioritization of and implementation of laboratory fish welfare.

In the United Kingdom and many other countries, fish have not historically qualified for sympathy because they were deemed too dissimilar to humans [ 22 ] (p. 177). Times have changed: following rising concerns about food fish sustainability, oceanic health, and the industrialization of both wild-capture fisheries and aquaculture, the ethics of human-fish relations in their different forms and locations have slowly become topics of both popular (e.g., [ 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ]) and academic (e.g., [ 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 ]) criticism. Additionally, there has been an explosion of scientific interest in the cognitive abilities of fish and their capacity for emotional experiences, topics which tend to have a close association with debates about welfare, ethics and the controversy about fish pain, e.g., [ 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 ]. Fish welfare has also risen slowly up the agenda of animal welfare charities and campaign groups. Following the steep rise of finfish aquaculture in the global North, the websites of most of the large, multi-campaign issue organizations now feature dedicated pages to fish farming and humane slaughter. There are also a growing number of online campaign groups dedicated specifically to raising awareness about suffering in fisheries and advocating for fish sentience—Fish Feel, Let Fish Live, and fishcount.org are prominent examples see [ 37 , 38 , 39 ]. Via the European Union in particular, regulators have made attempts at entrenching the legal recognition of fish as sentient beings in practice, and have been active in areas including humane slaughter regulations and the harmonizing of husbandry standards for farmed fish, e.g., [ 40 , 41 , 42 ]. These and other developments (notably welfare-motivated restrictions on recreational angling in Switzerland and Germany) have recently led some fisheries biologists to wonder what the developing welfare agenda means for the future of aquaculture, angling, commercial fishing and research? [ 43 ].

However, the (re)emergence of discussions around contested moralities of recreational angling [ 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 ], welfare in the context of wild-capture fisheries [ 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 ], the ethics of dietary trends (pescetarianism) [ 54 , 55 ], and the putative demands amongst consumers in some countries for higher welfare farmed fish [ 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 ], all suggest that there remain stubborn, sometimes intractable, challenges in all of these areas. Growth in the number of commentators does not necessarily reflect serious changes in policy and practice. It is also not yet clear whether recent interest by the news media in scientific work exploring the mental and emotional capacities of some fish species—including for example their capacity to feel pain [ 62 ], pass the mirror test of putative self-awareness [ 63 ], or “pine” for their mates and get depressed [ 64 , 65 ]—either reflect or have provoked substantial changes in public attitude. What people make of such information is open to debate. The film Finding Nemo, with its positive and engaging portrayal of one the ocean’s most charismatic fish species and its famous line “fish are friends—not food”, was predicted to have caused a ripple effect in public sentiment towards fish and the aquatic world. However, ironically, when the geographer Driessen [ 66 ] investigated this, he discovered that the film had, in fact, become a popular name for cafés specializing in fish and chips. With one café already adopting it as a name, the same appears set to be true of Blue Planet II, David Attenborough’s hugely popular documentary, which has been credited with kick-starting debate about the state of the planet’s oceans, and showed the world footage of sophisticated and surprising fish behaviors, including tool use [ 67 , 68 ].

This wider social and cultural context is important when approaching the welfare situation of laboratory fish and the 3Rs. The intensification of fish use in laboratory research generally—and the rise to prominence of zebrafish models in particular—have likewise provoked higher levels of interest in the issue of fish welfare in the sector in the UK and internationally. This includes an emergence of reflections on different ethical issues associated with the use of fish in research specifically [ 21 , 69 , 70 ]. There has also been a growing willingness to consider, develop and implement 3Rs initiatives focused on fish amongst animal technologists, scientists, veterinarians and policy makers, and both the UK and pan-European laboratory animal welfare and veterinary organizations have all played different roles in highlighting fish welfare amongst their constituencies, e.g., [ 71 , 72 , 73 ]. Furthermore, there are direct links between developments in laboratory fish welfare and other sectors. In the UK, intensive aquaculture and the laboratory aquarium are connected via personnel, technology and knowledge transfer. For example, via links between forums such as the Fish Veterinary Society and the Laboratory Animal Veterinary Society (both subsections of the British Veterinary Society), or notable colloquiums organized by organizations like the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS).

Yet, again, there remains a widespread sense amongst those who work with fish or who regulate fish-based science that the degree of attention that fish of any species receive is not yet commensurate with the quantities in which they are used, their importance to science, nor—if much recent behavioral and neuroscientific evidence is accepted—their possible levels of suffering. As the authors’ have often heard in the course of their research, this sense is quite widely shared amongst scientists, technologists and others who work with fish (including zebrafish) in the UK. This can filter through and be reflected in efforts to prioritize 3Rs and other welfare-relevant interventions that benefit fish. By discussing challenges to the 3Rs with reference to wider context, this paper sets out to stimulate discussion and reflection by proposing that developments (or lack thereof) in this field are connected to a variety of interlinked social drivers, and scientific, institutional and regulatory viewpoints.

2. Materials and Methods

Within the social sciences, qualitative methods offer an effective and insightful means of understanding the intersection of the broader (largely utilitarian) ethical frameworks which shape animal research, and the more individualized moral convictions, beliefs and practices of those who work closely with laboratory animals and who are often tasked with implementing policy. Interviews and participant observation, alongside the analysis of key literatures, policy documents and archival materials, have formed the basis of several landmark studies in the field, e.g., [ 9 , 74 ], and have proved highly effective in developing understandings of how ethics and the 3Rs are “put into practice” in the field of animal research [ 75 ]. Adopting a similar approach, this paper seeks to energise debate on fish and the 3Rs by drawing on the authors’ experiences of participant observation in UK zebrafish facilities, participation in professional events and conferences, as well as interviews with stakeholders. It is not intended to be a technical review of 3Rs initiatives and related welfare issues for zebrafish (of these there are a growing number, see e.g., [ 21 , 69 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 80 , 81 ]). The objective here is to gain insights into how people who work with laboratory fish understand and explain their practices and their relationships to the humans and animals they work with, and also to the wider field of animal research. In other words, we are offering an account of the ways in which people talk about: (i) whether or not they (and others) care about fish (attitudes towards); and (ii) how this shapes their ability to care for them (husbandry practices). By relating these to wider literatures, policy documents and other textual sources we can begin to build up a picture of the key social norms and discourses in and around laboratory zebrafish research, the possible implications of these for fish welfare, and hopefully shed light on barriers to implementing and developing the 3Rs initiatives for from a sociological, rather than technical, point of view.

The arguments presented in this paper are derived from a larger body of ongoing research into the species and spaces of contemporary animal research in the UK, performed as a part of the collaborative research project “The Animal Research Nexus” project (see www.animalresearchnexus.org ). This project seeks to understand the factors that have shaped and continue to underpin the social contract on which animal research in the UK rest, better understand emergent issues and challenges, and contribute positively to cultures of communication across the sector. This paper draws on data and insights developed in one sub-strand of this wider project. This strand of work focused on understanding the care and welfare work of animal technologists, the managers of aquarium facilities and scientists who work with fish, asking how their understandings of their work relate to wider ethical and legal frameworks. As a part of this, we also engaged with other stakeholders, including veterinary professionals and the regulators of animal research in the UK—in particular, Home Office Inspectors—as well as animal welfare organisations.

This study adopts a mixed method approach, drawing on a combination of in-depth interviews, participant observation and documentary analyses. Firstly, in order to gain an insight into how fish welfare is put into practice, the first author has taken part in two one-week-long stints as a participant-observer in two different zebrafish aquariums in the UK, conducted repeat visits to a facility to see how they introduced a new zebrafish room, and participated in a professional training course for researchers and technicians who work with zebrafish. Secondly, we have reviewed publicly available documentation and relevant professional literature. Thirdly, we conducted in-depth semi-structured qualitative interviews with 27 individuals (two interviews involved more than one participant being interviewed at a time), including scientists, animal technologists, facility managers, veterinary professionals, representatives of animal welfare charities, and regulators. Additionally, both authors have paid shorter visits to numerous fish facilities across the UK over the past seven years, as well as attended and participating in a variety of professional conferences and related forums and engaging in ongoing collaboration and dialogue with the wider animal research community and associated stakeholders, including both those supportive of and against animal research. While we have interviewed three scientists based at contract research organizations and pharmaceutical companies, and those who specialise in commercial regulatory testing, our focus has been on university-based bioscience research. This is because this is where the vast majority of fish research in the UK is conducted. This is additionally justified because there is already a disproportionate focus on toxicology research in the 3Rs literature [ 82 , 83 ]. Lasting, on average, around one and a half hours, interviews were conducted, where possible, at the place of work of the interviewee. Interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed and analyzed thematically using the qualitative data analyses tool NVivo. A number of key themes were identified ( Table 1 ). A close reading of the relevant sections of text associated with each of these codes was then used to establish which of these themes are most pertinent to understanding the social and cultural barriers to implementing the 3Rs for zebrafish welfare, the topic of this paper—other themes identified, of course, relate more to emergent elements of the wider program. This was justified with primary reference to what participants themselves said about the 3Rs, our own experience of interacting with stakeholders and working in zebrafish facilities (participant observation), reference to themes in associated literature (discourse analysis), as well as in the light of secondary social science literature on the social organisation of animal science and the 3Rs.

Summary of main themes emerging from qualitative interviews.

These themes represent the top 25 codes generated by the authors in the process of data analyses. They are reported in descending order, from most used to least frequently used. Codes and the themes they represent often overlap. The number of times a code is used can suggest the importance of the subject to both the speaker and analyst, but the frequency of use is not on its own a measure of importance or relevance to the present topic.

While a number of foci suggest themselves, some of which the authors’ explore in forthcoming work, we have thus restricted the discussion below to three key themes: “knowledge and consensus”, “attitudes and experiences”, and “institutional support and capacity”.

In keeping with the intentions of qualitative research of this kind, emphasis is placed on depth as opposed to breadth. The sample size is small, and the results selected for presented here are indicative of a wide range of themes and key issues that should be taken into account rather than thought of as being representative in any way. A logical next step may be to use some of the perceived issues and concerns raised here as a basis for a larger, quantitative study. Inevitably, we have also neglected to discuss a number of important social and scientific issues relevant to understanding the challenges to taking up 3Rs initiatives focused on zebrafish, or fish in general. These include, for example, generic concerns about the lower status of animal welfare science and 3Rs related research versus the attractions of other fields of biological research and the relative ghettoisation of 3Rs research as a distinct category [ 84 ] (p.128). It is also possible that if and when concerns about the reproducibility of much zebrafish-based science grows, so too will “neophobia” increase in prominence as a barrier to 3Rs interventions with zebrafish though is not something reflected in our data [ 85 ].

Due to the sensitive nature of the topic (animal research), a policy of anonymisation and decontextualisation has been applied to all transcripts in order to ensure the privacy of participants. All names used in this paper are pseudonyms. All interviews were conducted with the written consent of participants. This research has been granted ethical approval by the Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC) of the University of Oxford (Reference Number: SOGE 18A-7). By agreement with the Wellcome Trust and research participants, anonymised interview transcripts will be deposited in the UK Data Archive based at the University of Essex ( https://www.data-archive.ac.uk ) after a period of 10 years from the completion of the Animal Research Nexus Project in 2022, except in cases where participants have explicitly opted out of this arrangement.

Focusing on Zebrafish

This paper focuses on zebrafish because, over the last three decades, they have become by far the most prominent species of fish used in animal research. In 2018, zebrafish accounted for 12 percent of all procedures done on live animals (including creation and breeding of GA lines) in the UK. All other species of fish combined accounted for 2.6 percent of animals used [ 86 ]. The species’ relatively steep rise towards the apex of lab “supermodels” has often meant that those seeking to develop 3Rs and other welfare-relevant scientific and husbandry protocols have had to work hard to keep up with the pace of change whilst striving to improve [ 80 , 87 ]. At the same time, the rise of the zebrafish, in conjunction with other trends such the intensification of aquaculture production and related public anxieties about environmental externalities and food safety, have most likely served to cast light onto the issue of fish welfare more generally, e.g., [ 42 , 88 , 89 ]. To this extent, and remaining mindful of the extensive diversity of fish kinds, many of the points made in this paper will nevertheless also be relevant to other fish species.

A number of factors are regularly cited as key attractions of the zebrafish model for biologists. These include its hardiness in captivity, small size, short generation time, rapid development and large clutch size. These factors also make them relatively cheap to maintain in large numbers. In addition, the comparative simplicity of the zebrafish genome facilitated the application of various molecular technologies. In combination with the extraordinary optical accessibility of its embryos and young larvae (they are transparent and fertilized externally to the mother’s body), these features have made zebrafish a highly tractable model for other vertebrate animals, and useful in a wide range of fields. However, these very advantages of the organism for science can also contribute to the entrenchment of particular attitudes towards them, and towards fish generally. Moreover, they can raise 3Rs considerations in their own right. Ironically, their hardiness in captivity has proven a disincentive for refining their husbandry conditions [ 90 ] (p.141). Depending on local aquarium practices and pricing structures, the low costs of maintaining zebrafish in large numbers and the ease with which they can usually be bred can create an incentive to keep transgenic lines running even when they are not being used, and a disincentive to cryopreserve and regenerate on demand—strategies which would be seen as more consistent with a reduction in animal use. The fact that zebrafish models can be valuable surrogates for other vertebrates also tends to compound the view of them as “lower” on the so-called phylogenetic scale, contributing in turn to the view that the use of fish (as embryos or larvae, but also adults) represents a kind of “relative replacement” for other vertebrate animals [ 91 ] (p.274), which is to say, a means for achieving 3Rs (replacement or refinement) targets, as opposed to individuals to whom the 3Rs principles of refinement, reduction and replacement could be applied (see also [ 92 ]).

The scale at which zebrafish are maintained and the ease and rate at which they can be induced to reproduce can also all contribute to a sense of their replaceability, and underline the difficulty of forming a bond with them as individuals—even in comparison to other small, short-lived and relatively easily replaced laboratory vertebrates like mice [ 93 , 94 ]. Some people, especially animal technologists, attempt to think of fish as unique individual beings that deserve attention as such. At one facility, we know there is an informal motto that runs along the lines of: “they’re all a group of fish, but every fish is an individual” (interview with Eugenie, aquarium facility manager, 8 February 2018). However, at the same time, it is acknowledged that this requires effort to sustain, and successful and lasting individualisation is the exception, not the rule (see also [ 95 ]). For all these and other reasons—some of which will be explored in more detail below—it is common to hear the argument that the apparent lack of social or ethical concerns associated with the use of fish in experiments is in itself one of the advantages of using zebrafish-based model systems, e.g., [ 20 ] (p. 407–408). Fish in general, but zebrafish specifically, are indeed frequently viewed as the “easier ethical option”, as one participant in our study put it (interview with Helen, representative of an animal welfare organization, 9 January 2019). In sum, while similar things may be said about other fish species, there are good reasons to pay special attention to zebrafish.

3. Results and Discussion

Analyses of our interview data suggest the presence of three especially significant social norms or discourses about fish welfare in the laboratory context. For summary purposes, we have labelled these “knowledge and consensus”, “attitudes and experiences”, and “institutional support and capacity”. Each of these narratives is internally diverse in terms of the individual opinions expressed, as well as overlapping and mutually reinforcing. Key themes included in the discussions which follow include: (structural) enrichment, fish, regulatory attitudes with respect to fish and the public; views about fish, embryos and larvae from within the aquarium and the size and composition of the zebrafish community

3.1. Knowledge and Consensus

Appendix A of the European Convention for the Protection of Vertebrate Animals used for Experimental and other Scientific Purposes (ETS123) provides key guidelines for the accommodation and care of animals used in science across Europe. Speaking about the challenge of managing a number of expert working groups convened by Council of Europe during the process of revising Appendix A in the early 2000s, an ex-UK Home Office Inspector told us “ [It] was like herding cats—they would not agree on anything ” (interview with Colin, ex-Home Office Inspector, 26 June 2019). In his experience, the field of fish welfare has been characterised by a lot of disagreement, often underpinned by insufficient knowledge of fish/zebrafish welfare science and of the basic biology that informs it, at least in comparison to the knowledge of the other major laboratory animal species. Similarly, our research suggests that, amongst those involved in the worlds of zebrafish science, there is limited consensus on what best practice is in a number of important welfare and 3Rs-relevant areas. Debate rages on numerous topics, including stocking density, food and feeding regimes, methods of anesthesia, euthanasia, the need for analgesia, and the need for environmental enrichment, to name only a few. This is reflected, as Colin explained, in the relative paucity of official guidance available for fish at the EU level or the level of individual member states—even for zebrafish, which are the most studied and used species. This section therefore explores narratives about knowledge, consensus and disagreement, focusing on two different examples. Firstly, the question of environmental enrichment, and secondly variation in beliefs about the ability of fish to feel pain and suffer, both of which are clearly relevant to welfare generally and the 3Rs specifically.

3.1.1. “Putting Things in Tanks”

There exists a division in the zebrafish community in the UK between those who are in favor of environmental enrichment, and those who raise concerns about it (see also [ 96 ] p.586). To be specific, some facility managers and technologists—experienced husbandry professionals, some with backgrounds in relevant scientific disciplines—express doubts about the benefits of structural enrichment: the addition of plastic plants, substrates and so forth so as to provide cover and stimulation for fish who otherwise live in barren, clear plastic tanks. Some suggested that structural enrichment can encourage abnormal behavior, but the most common issue raised was that the welfare benefits of structural enrichment were not very clear. Felix, an experienced facility manager with a background in research, suggested there was a fashion for “putting things in tanks” (interview with Felix, aquarium facility manager, 1 November 2018). Felix, and others whom we have spoken to who share his point of view, are far from dismissive of enrichment for fish in general but worry that a focus on structural enrichments is a distraction from the factors they think are really more important for fish welfare and should be the focus of attention. Felix terms these more important factors the “subtle enrichments, your lighting, your temperatures, your feeding, your flows, those are a much more valuable asset than a plastic plant within a tank”.

People like Felix worry that the evidence base about the value of such structural enrichments for zebrafish is weak. An ex-Home Office inspector comments:

I think probably the biggest constraint is just actually the lack of good data and scientific knowledge about what an appropriate environment for the zebrafish might be. I think again there is quite a lot of anthropomorphic views on what a zebrafish actually requires. You put them into an empty tank and that must be bad for them so they then put in lots of substrate and weeds and various other things in as well, you know, but we don’t really know, I don’t know… [interview with Craig, ex-Home Office Inspector, 25 June 2019]

Another facility manager concurs, arguing the welfare benefits of this kind of enrichment are in her estimation “fairly unproven”:

[W]e can’t make that much more progress I personally don’t feel unless we can really say this is what is good for them in terms of like environmental enrichment, do we want divers in there with bubbles, and why would we want that, where do they ever see that, or plastic plants, would they see that in the wild? Is it appropriate? [interview with Fae, aquarium facility manager, 27 February 2018]

No one, of course, is suggesting the use of plastic divers and shipwrecks in academic research aquariums. The point being made is that the desire for objects in tanks is largely a human one: it satisfies our humane and aesthetic demands, rather than (so the suggestion goes) the real needs of the animals (as far as we know). Hence it has been pursued in the absence of evidence about its benefits. Fae and others in her position do not disagree that it is possible to observe certain behavioral changes on the introduction of an object like a plastic plant or simulated substrate, for example, which suggest a preference for occupying enriched parts of the tank. It is the interpretation of what these observed behavioral changes might actually mean for fish welfare that is questioned.

These kinds of concerns were echoed by animal technologists who work closely with fish. For example, Frank noted:

We can look at cortisone levels or whatever but you don’t really know if you’re actually helping them. Like with a plant, I mean on one hand you’re creating cover for them to hide in if they’re getting bullied or fighting, on the other hand, you’re creating something for someone to get territorial about and stressed about. [interview with Frank, senior animal technologist, 18 January 2018]

A Home Office inspector also noted that

[I]n terms of enrichment, for instance, we don’t actually know largely what fish want. […] And I think that--, that’s a significant challenge to get over some of the hurdles and show people how it can happen. [interview with Gail, Home Office Inspector, 15 May 2019]

While Gail sees this lack of knowledge as a barrier to acceptance, this does not feature in her discourse as a reason for being cautious about advocating their uptake in aquariums. Evidently, people operate with different ideas about what a sufficient evidential bar is. This reflects divisions in the field of laboratory animal welfare more generally as to whether the intuitions and experiences of the practices and protocols developed by technologists in individual facilities offer a strong enough evidence base for novel enrichment practices [ 75 ]. In this context, it is, of course, possible to cleave too bio-physiological measures of “health” only, in which the psychological and emotional factors usually comprehended within the wider term “welfare” are excluded. [ 44 ]. However, the latter, more encompassing and holistic outlook certainly seems to motivate managers and technologists who go out of their way to provide structural enrichments when they can. Sometimes this can be a real labor of love. One establishment found it could not afford to buy plastic plants from a hobby shop, so developed a way of making “plants” by fashioning them from plastic bags and weighing these down with marbles. This took six months of soaking the bags in a light bleach solution to stop the plastic leaching substances that may interfere with scientific results, and careful and time-consuming handwork by staff members to shape the fronds and attach the weights [RM, Field Notes,11 January 2018].

Advocates of structural enrichment do cite published evidence in favor of their opinions. A paper suggesting that zebrafish express a preference for substrates by positioning themselves over photographs of gravel is particularly often cited in the UK (see [ 97 ]). Those already inclined to enrichment tend to find such evidence a better reason to act than others who are not. An animal welfare policy expert felt that these results clearly “show that they [zebrafish] benefit from environmental enrichment”, but implied that this evidence was ignored (interview with Helen, representative of animal welfare organization, 9 January 2019). Others object to this interpretation of the meaning of fish preference behaviors or report having been told of (the referecne to hearsay is deliberate here) statistical or methodological weaknesses in papers about enrichment, and explain that people they know—others in the field—have taken these as a basis for inaction.

We would suggest that these differences cannot be understood by looking at the published scientific literature only. Technologists and facility managers are moreover also at pains to point out the practical and economic downsides of structural environmental enrichments. For example, they can obscure technologists’ view of the fish whilst performing mandatory health checks, slowing them down and potentially leaving them less time for other important husbandry and welfare issues. They may also gather dirt and become unhygienic, and of course, they cost money to purchase in the first place which may have previously been allocated elsewhere.

Another factor shaping orientations on this topic seems to be an identification with and long-term exposure to the world of mammalian husbandry, and especially previous experience working with rodents. Amongst our participants, those who most clearly expressed skepticism towards structural enrichment (plants, houses, substrate or even images of substrate), tended to identify strongly as “fish people” first and foremost. They may, for example, have backgrounds in marine biology, aquaculture, or hobby aquaria, or simply have no or limited professional interaction with the world of rodent husbandry. In some cases, the facilities which we visited who do not enrich as a matter of course are geographically, socially and administratively separate from the biological service facilities which run mammalian animal units. They tend to see the need to put “things in tanks” as something imported from the world of “fluffies” (as the technologists at one facility called them), and often pushed by people with more knowledge of mice specifically than of fish. Fae again expresses the point: “we look to mammals”, she told us “and go oh yeah environmental enrichment, that’s structural things in tanks” (interview with Fae, aquarium facility manager, 27 February 2018).

On the other hand, Fae herself recalled how 20 or 30 years ago, it was common to see mice and rat cages that were entirely devoid of structural enrichments, like many zebrafish tanks today. Thus, the experience with rodents gets overlaid onto fish, as though fish must, or should be, on the same trajectory. In this case, “things in tanks” follow from being used to seeing “things in cages”. Evelyn, who is has extensive experience in all manner of mammalian husbandry, including running rat and mouse houses, and who takes pride in the compliment that her aquarium is run “like a mouse unit”, told us that

if the mice were in the same situation 20 years ago [as the fish are today] they were just mice, but now like we have to provide enrichment, we have to provide certain bedding and nesting materials, we have to do this, we have to do that, and at some point or other, maybe not in my time, but the fish will have the same rights [laughs] somewhere along the line. [interview with Evelyn, aquarium facility manager, 18 January 2018]

Thus, knowledge of the welfare trajectory of mice is actually an explicit motivation for pursuing innovations, including enrichment, for fish in some cases. To be clear, the point is not that some of our research participants objected to better or more complex enrichments. Rather, they expressed skepticism about whether structural enrichments specifically have positive welfare effects that outweigh their downsides in different circumstances. Notably, it seems that this doubt is likely to be spiced with concerns about the source of advocacy for structural forms of environmental enrichment, including the belief that this is an ideology that is imported, without due consideration to context and species differences, from the world of rodent husbandry. Such views are connected to identity as well as to evaluations of evidence .

The matter became more acute for some participants when they perceived pressure to adopt structural enrichments to be coming from regulatory authorities, the most visible face of which are the UK Home Office Inspectors (HOI). Felix, for example, stated that, in his view, it was the Home Office who starting pressing for enrichment for fish “because that’s what they did for rodents”. Cynically, he concluded that “[I] could have solved the majority of my problems [related to facility inspections] if I had just had a plastic plant in the tank” (interview with Felix, animal facility manager, 1 November 2018). Another facility manager we spoke to, a keen proponent of enrichment for all kinds of animal, lamented the fact that, in his opinion some researchers do actually choose to enrich as a kind of virtue signaling to outsiders, especially the Home Office, not because they actually care much about what it might mean for animal welfare (RM, Field Notes, 16 August 2018).

The objection to “putting things in tanks” is thus sociological as well as scientific: those making the argument draw not only on scientific evidence but on their understandings of the views of outsiders to the fish world and their relationship to authority figures, as well as more pragmatic material and economic factors. We would suggest that similar combinations of factors are present in the instances of a variety of other disagreements associated with fish welfare in the aquarium. It is also important to note that everyone would welcome more research into the use of enrichments specifically and the biology of fish welfare generally. However, it would appear—and this is an issue demanding more research—it is equally important to achieving a sense of agreement on the underlying framework for deciding on what good welfare is and how it should be assessed. Furthermore, as we’ve suggested, where welfare recommendations are produced or come from (by scientists, by technologists or by particular groups or individuals, for example) and who they are promoted by (aquarists, “mouse people” or an HOI and so forth) can be very important, over and above the recommendations themselves, in determining their reception by the laboratory animal community.

3.1.2. Pain and Analgesia

Although the view is not universal, for many people who work with fish, fish welfare generally and the 3Rs specifically only have meaning on the assumption that these animals are sentient beings, feel pain and suffer as a consequence [ 88 , 98 ]. This intuition is reinforced by the fact that the law in the UK and the European Union effectively assumes that they are sentient and certainly that they feel pain. As such, the ongoing and high-profile debate about whether or not fish have, as a matter of scientific fact, the capacity to feel pain and suffer [ 35 , 99 , 100 ] has limited direct influence on the implementation and development of 3Rs-orientated welfare initiatives targeted at fish. In the day-to-day running of laboratory animal facilities, good animal welfare is a matter of complying with regulation, not challenging the epistemic or ethical assumptions of the law with respect to the possibility of emotional and subjective experience in fish.

Nevertheless, the fact that there is a continuing controversy about fish pain might have a variety of more-or-less indirect effects that are relevant to understanding barriers to implementing the 3Rs with fish. Almost everyone we spoke to about this issue expressed varying degrees of uncertainty about whether fish actually feel pain, what this means to them, and whether humans will ever be in a position to know much about this. Given the oft-remarked phenomenon of “sentientism” (not to mention “speciesism”), this is unsurprising [ 101 ]. In some cases, though, opinions on the subject were connected directly to the scholarly debate. For example, one researcher who takes a negative view of the issue argued:

“What I want to say is, erm, I think it is a difficult subject because until you really know, you can’t estimate what an animal perceives or what it doesn’t perceive. But what all the research shows at the moment is that you [the fish] do not have the higher brain structures required to perceive pain. [interview with Hanna, researcher, 27 November 2018]

In other cases, it was based more on personal intuition and belief. Referring to the behavior of post-operative fish, Evelyn said:

They [the fish] act like everything is fine, but there is always a nagging doubt in the back of my head, there always will be. My dad was a fisherman, you know, and you can’t tell me that having a hook through your lip is not going to be painful. Can they [the fish] feel it? I don’t know. [interview with Evelyn, animal facility manager, 18 January 2018]

It is hard of course in any case to attribute the causes of particular actions or lack thereof specifically to beliefs about fish pain. However, there are a number of specific areas where such beliefs are more likely to shape action and influence debate in the field.

The foremost example of this is probably the use (or lack thereof) of analgesia. Some of our participants pointed out that it is a default legal requirement to administer pain relief for all protected animals when appropriate, yet in the case of fish there was no standard analgesic authorized for use, nor indeed is analgesia use as widely practiced as it could be. There are many reasons that the use of analgesia following procedures on small fish like zebrafish may be problematic. Many of these refer to basic problems of a lack of evidence and/or consensus. Problems include a need to better understand the trade-offs between analgesia and other welfare concerns. For example, does the benefit of analgesia for a social species like a zebrafish outweigh the benefits of remaining in group housing, since isolation is usually necessary to administer it, and in what circumstances? They also include limited knowledge of the potential confounding variables that analgesic agents can introduce into experimental outcomes, a lack of knowledge of the pharmacological effects of different analgesic agents on different species, as well as problems connected with how to recognise and assess the effectiveness of these agents in these animals [ 102 , 103 ].

Nevertheless, more than one veterinarian has proposed that the existence of controversy on the subject of fish pain could be an underlying factor explaining the unwillingness amongst those responsible to implement analgesia protocols [ 104 ]. In the opinion of Schroeder and Mocho [ 105 ] (p.36), moreover, there is a danger that prospective applicants for licenses downplay evidence suggesting that fish do feel pain in favor of emphasising that it has not been conclusively shown that they do, and interpret the latter “as ‘carte blanche’ to avoid the use of analgesics altogether”. While much more fine-grained evidence needs to be gathered in order to understand resistance to, or at least slowness of spread, of analgesic protocols at the facility level, there are reasonable grounds for considering the fish pain controversy to be a contributory factor. While pain itself could be seen as introducing confounding effects, in one case we are aware of, permission not to administer analgesia following invasive surgery was granted for a combination of reasons, both scientific (related to the introduction of confounding effects) and welfare based, including the production of published arguments suggesting that fish are unlikely to experience the emotional effects of pain of the sort associated with higher and forebrain structures in mammals (interview with Hanna, researcher; RM Field Notes, 11 January 2018). So, plausibly, it is at least something which could tip the balance against analgesia in tie-breaker situations. Again here it is not only the scientific evidence which is shaping decisions about fish welfare, but how that evidence (or the lack thereof) is selectively deployed in decision making processes, with individuals most drawn to the evidence they believe supports their case, as has long been observed by science studies scholars in a range of fields of research, e.g., [ 106 ].

While the debates over analgesia use offer an example of the fish-pain controversy potentially shaping welfare practice, the most important effects of the ongoing debate on fish pain are likely to be more diffuse, influencing attitudes and priorities in subtle ways. In particular, there is the possibility that uncertainty about the nature of fish sentience gets shifted into plausible but unsubstantiated beliefs about fish’s relative lack of sentience in comparison to other vertebrates in some kind of a putative scale of sentience for which there is little or no objective basis. While regulations sensitive to the recognition of degrees of sentience may one day be possible and desirable [ 107 ], as it is such views about differences amongst vertebrates are likely to be informed by outdated ideas about the phylogenetic scale [ 91 ], as well as more arbitrary and sentimental ideas about what people believe is acceptable to do to different categories of animal [ 6 , 9 , 108 ]. A Home Office Inspector we interviewed tried to pick her way through this complex terrain:

So there’s been huge arguments over those 20 years about are fish sentient at all? […] And I’ve always taken the presumption, well it’s in our law, that they wouldn’t be protected if they weren’t sentient--, if we didn’t believe they were sentient [they wouldn’t be there] and therefore we should be doing the best that we can for them. But equally they are a fantastic model as a replacement because, as far as we know, they are less sentient than other species, but we don’t know. So we would still suggest that it is better to move into zebrafish than to use mice, and I say that with some hesitancy […] most people in society I think would be more comfortable with fish being a replacement for mice. [interview with Gail, Home Office Inspector, 15 May 2019]

In this passage, it is very clear how beliefs about what the public feel about the use of different animals fills the gap opened up by the admission of fundamental uncertainty about the nature of fish sentience and experience. This movement is common in our experience. The concept of “societal sentience” has been proposed to understand such situations [ 109 ]. This refers to how people, especially policy makers, imagine what the public feels about animals—i.e., it is the feelings (sentience) of people that are in focus here, more than animals. In this context, relationships and attitudes to animals like fish, as well as beliefs about the extent to which those attitudes are shared with a wider ‘socially sentient’ public, can become extremely important in mediating decisions about their use and, by extension the urgency and relevance of 3Rs initiatives. This is the subject of the following section.

3.2. Attitudes and Experiences

When there is an acknowledged lack of scientific consensus on issues that are of community and policy relevance, the values and perspectives held by collective and individual stakeholders can play a key role in shaping policy decisions and practices [ 110 ]. This section explores attitudes towards fish and the 3Rs held by those working in research settings and the factors shaping them. It focuses on the influence of those involved in regulation, including policy documents and legislation, as well as those with first-hand experiences working with zebrafish.

3.2.1. Regulators and the Public

The legal framework that regulates animal research in the UK is remarkably un-speciesist. Fish are formally afforded the same protections as most other vertebrate animals. For example, the two most commonly used laboratory animals—fish and mice—have exactly the same status in legislation. The importance of this should not be underestimated—not only in legal terms, but in terms of the broader agenda it helps set and the message it sends to all who work in the field. However, this picture changes somewhat with a closer look at the legislation and especially its modes of implementation. What emerges is a sense of hierarchy. In the UK, some animals do have some additional protections consequent on their special status in human society (primates, cats, dogs and horses). This suggests a subtle gradient of “social acceptability” in terms of what is expected to be tolerated by the public [ 109 ] (p.683) and, consequently, a prioritisation of the interests of certain species above that others emerges.

In the UK, the Animals in Science Regulation Unit (ASRU), based in the Home Office, is responsible for regulating the operation of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 (ASPA). ASRU’s Inspectorate division plays a key role in interpreting and applying the law and developing policy. A central element of this is reviewing and approving project license applications (a license is required to perform regulated experimental procedures on regulated animals in the UK). As a part of applying for a license, prospective licensees are required by law to demonstrate they have considered the 3Rs in the development of their research program. To assist applicants in completing the necessary documentation, the Inspectorate produce an annotated license form. This guidance document suggests applicants justify that their chosen animal model is the most refined possible, asking as prompt: “Why can’t you use animals with a lower capacity to experience pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm, e.g., fish instead of mice?” [ 111 ] (p.22). (The document is called “ASPeL Project License Application Template—General License Under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986”, version V 2.0 21/12/17 and is (at the time of writing) still available via the Home Office website. Previous versions contained similar advice.) It is hard to assess the specific effects of this kind of “official” advice, but it is likely to have proven important in the past in promulgating the idea that the use of fish versus mice (or other mammals) is a kind of refinement or “relative replacement” in itself. For example, one grant awarded by the UK’s main 3Rs funding body, the NC3Rs, explicitly described the use of zebrafish as “a great opportunity for reduction of the use of higher order vertebrate species thereby reducing animal suffering” as its central 3Rs justification see [ 112 ]. This suggests embedded social and cultural assumptions about the sentience of fish and mice that are hard to justify purely in scientific terms. Implicitly or explicitly viewing the use of fish versus mice in this way sits awkwardly with the formal equality articulated in the definition of protected animal in legislation. It actually undermines what has been years of effort by Inspectors and others in the UK to elevate the status of fish and promote their welfare—and indeed recent advice has clearly moved away from this.

The management of risk is a related important way in which representations of the public’s putative attitude towards fish may be made relevant to regulators. In our interviews, HOIs themselves talk a lot about risk assessment and risk management, particularly in terms of the allocation of Inspector resources and site inspections. A risk-based approach has become increasingly central and formalised in the wake of tightening budgets in the last decade. Risk in this context refers to a number of things, especially risk of non-compliance with the law and the presence of new species and use of novel procedures at a facility [ 113 ] (pp.22–23). But what could be described as “societal concerns” also emerged in our research, informing these sources of risk and adding their own dimension (see also [ 114 ] p.16). This includes concerns about the possibility of overt public outcries over the use or mistreatment of animals in research, and we suggest that in practice this is often interpreted as political or reputational risk to the Minister. For example, Craig, reflecting on the acceleration of a risk-based management approach at the Home Office, told us that in his opinion “the whole thing that actually drives ASPA [legislation] I think is essentially public perception” (interview with Craig, ex-Home Office Inspector, 25 June 2019). Thus, work involving specially protected species for which the public has great sympathy, such as with nonhuman primates, is typically viewed as especially high risk. Heather also noted how “public perception and risk” are a part of the calculation which informs how Inspectors allocate their attention:

You know, so obviously, the feeling is that the public would prefer, if you like, primates to be inspected more frequently and are maybe less concerned about mice being [inspected]. [interview with Heather, ex-Home Office Inspector, 17 January 2019]

This is clearly connected to ideas about species hierarchies, albeit in contextually specific ways.

Craig and Gail also referred to conservation work involving badgers as an example of an especially high-risk research program because badgers are believed to command a great deal of public attention and have been widely politicised in the UK (see [ 115 ]). In contrast, Gail says, “there are people who are doing conservation work on species that perhaps are not so high in the public consciousness and so the relative risk for the Minister then is lower” (interview with Gail, Home Office Inspector, 15 May 2019). Things which are likely to scandalise the Secretary of State are, of course, breaches in legal compliance in terms of animal welfare law, and harms being caused which are indefensible in the face of limited benefits. Thus, animal welfare and the management of (political) risk are not incompatible goals, but they are not necessary always perfectly aligned either. Zebrafish per se cannot be said to rank as a low priority in all circumstances—this would be too much of a generalisation and a lot of effort has gone into trying to raise the profile of zebrafish welfare at the Home Office and beyond. However, given what has been said about the perception of fish, their representation in the regulatory discourse, and widespread assumptions about what the public feel about fish, it is perhaps not unreasonable to suggest that they might occasionally fall between the cracks created when the different prerogatives of risk assessment are misaligned. This could contribute in turn to the effective, though unintentional, marginalisation of fish and a reduced likelihood of their being prioritised as candidates for investment in welfare interventions.

The relative marginalisation of fish is also evident in the materials of organised campaign groups, who are capable of aggregating and directing diffuse and ill-formed public sentiment, and who are an important intermediary in shaping the perspectives of those who make and enforce and policy [ 116 ]. A review of the homepages of relevant organisations in Britain suggests that they do not consider fish an important focus for their campaigns. The websites of the main groups campaigning for the abolition of animal research in the UK (Cruelty Free International, National Anti-Vivisection Society, Animal Free Research UK) feature a total of zero images of fish on their homepages, though primates, dogs and rabbits are well represented. The RSPCA’s Laboratory Animal’s webpage, despite the organisation’s important role in disseminating husbandry and welfare standards [ 71 ] and raising awareness of fish welfare in UK labs, likewise featured no images of fish at the time of writing. Turning to the homepages of UK-based organisations specifically focused on funding 3Rs initiatives and/or the development of alternatives to the use of animals in science (FRAME, NC3Rs, Lord Dowding Fund), we find a total of one fish-related image out of a total of 17 representations of animals displayed at any one time. Indeed, fish are not the “poster critters” of animal research generally: homepages of the major “industry bodies” (Institute of Animal Technology, Laboratory Animal Science Association, Laboratory Animal Veterinary Association) feature zero images of fish out of total of 15 representations of animals. (This analyses was performed on 20/08/2019. All identifiable representations of animals were counted, including organizational logos. Addresses for the relevant websites are as follows: National Anti-Vivisection Society: http://www.navs.org.uk/home/ ; Animal Free Research UK: https://www.animalfreeresearchuk.org/ ; Cruelty Free International (previously BUAV): https://www.crueltyfreeinternational.org/ ; RSPCA Laboratory animals: https://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/laboratory ; FRAME: https://frame.org.uk/ ; Lord Dowding Fund: http://www.ldf.org.uk/research/ ; NC3Rs: https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/ ; LASA: http://www.lasa.co.uk/ ; LAVA: https://www.lava.uk.net/index.php?sid=2dc936c14ca15e85e7d76b7d6b23092a ; IAT: https://www.iat.org.uk/ . The National Anti-Vivisection Society and Lord Dowding Fund websites feature a new stock image in their banners each time their pages are refreshed. Out of a total of at least 18 unique images registered, none feature fish.) Thus, if the unofficial status of fish is at least partially a function of the perception of the Inspectorate with respect to societal concerns and political risk, it is arguably a reasonably well-grounded one.

3.2.2. Relating to Fish in the Aquarium

The views of the “general public” are thus important (see, e.g., [ 18 ]), but what is perhaps most critical in the light of our discussion is appreciation of how the public is imagined by policy makers [ 109 ]. This imaginary in turn shapes the priorities of regulators with implications for the scrutiny and prioritization of 3Rs efforts. This could be viewed as a “top-down” influence on the implementation of the 3Rs for fish. Complementing this insight, we turn attention in this section to look in more detail at some of the views about fish held by technologists, aquarium managers and veterinarians, because these are also central to the development and application of the 3Rs in situ [ 75 ], or from the “bottom-up”.

In our experience, it is very common for people who work with fish on a daily basis to object to what they see as the semi-official neglect of fish and the tendency to view the use of fish as in itself a kind of refinement or even replacement. These attitudes are often accompanied by a desire to advocate for fish and see them treated equally with other animal denizens of the lab:

So, I think this idea that fish are some sort of replacement, I don’t think it’s right because we’ve decided to protect these animals so they should all be treated equally. [interview with Fiona, Named Veterinary Surgeon, 8 February 2018]

They should have the same rights as everything else, and it might be just a fish, but going back a very long time someone told me that it was just a monkey… So you know, there should be no difference in my--, I know a monkey is a monkey and intelligent, but they’re in this building looking at us to be their eyes, ears and voice and protect them, there should be no difference whether it’s a fruit fly or a fish or a monkey or a pig or a mouse, whatever. [interview with Evelyn, aquarium facility manager, 18 January 2018]

At one animal facility, we observed how a poster on a corridor wall advertising aspects of the European Directive (2010/63) on the use of animals in research was decorated with images of small furry mammals. Irritated by the absence of a representation of fish, aquarium staff had stuck pictures of fish over them [RM Field Notes, 11 January 2018, Figure 1 ].

An image of zebrafish is pasted over an image of mouse on an education and training poster at a UK zebrafish aquarium facility (detail from poster). 29 October 2019. Photo credit: Reuben Message.

It is also common for people who work regularly with fish to say that they see fish and other animals as equals, but that they are aware of people who do not:

[For me a fish is] still a living being so I don’t see it as being different myself. But I think a lot of people feel differently. [interview with Francis, researcher, 20 April 2018]

At the same time, however, people who work with fish will also often admit that they themselves do not feel the same way about fish as they do about other animals, especially mammals. Asked whether she empathised with her fish, Erica demurred with some difficulty:

I think that [the word empathy] might be too strong. But definitely in that direction. Yeah, it’s because their faces are different [laughs], so you can’t really empathise with something that looks different from you, I think. Not that I’m saying that’s the right thing, but--, [interview with Erica, senior animal technologist, 23 April 2018]

Despite being, as we have seen, a very enthusiastic champion of the “equal rights” of fish and advocate of laboratory animal equality, Evelyn admits that she finds working with fish emotionally less engaging. Fish are more difficult to attach to than animals like primates, pigs, sheep, rabbits and rats [interview with Evelyn, aquarium facility manager, 18 January 2018]. Grant, an experienced fish researcher and keen aquarium hobbyist, noted:

[…] from a personal point of view you can fairly well guess I care about my fish, and that lights me up. […Yet] I still feel more comfortable that we would use a fish rather than a mouse any day of the week. Even the smartest fish. That step into mammals--, […] is a difficult thing to deal with. [interview with Grant, researcher, 6 February 2018]

Gideon, another zebrafish user, declaimed the “double standard”, as he sees it, that gets applied to fish, but then noted that he also understands why the double standard exists because he feels it himself, and speculates on the causes:

Yeah, less emotional attachment. It’s undeniable, it’s not the same. […] I don’t know, maybe because it’s sushi. [interview with Gideon, researcher, 9 October 2018]

Frank, reflecting a very common theme amongst aquarists, noted that if he “had to cull a pig or a dog or a cat, I wouldn’t be in the job”, and explained that:

I’d rather work with fish because you don’t get the attachment that you would with mice. Maybe I’m the other way. I try not to be, but I am quite sort of, I can be anthropomorphic. I know that you can’t reflect your emotions onto them but it’s hard not to do so. In that sense I don’t have that relationship with the fish. I take them seriously and I care seriously and I want them to be healthy, but it wouldn’t keep me up at night, if I had to cull some fish at the end of the day it wouldn’t keep me up at night. [interview with Frank, senior animal technologist, 18 January 2018]

There are of course many reasons why fish generally and zebrafish specifically engender this kind of ambivalence, even amongst people who know them best and attend to them often on a daily basis. As discussed above, these include their small size, their relatively short lives and high reproductive rates, and the often very large numbers in which they are kept. All of these factors militate against humans forming lasting bonds with them as individuals. Then there are other specific biological and ecological characteristics of fish: their lack of “face” and “voice” with familiar interactional and emotional cues [ 66 ]. They lack what has been termed “nonhuman charisma” [ 117 ], an ascribed property of some animals that has been credited, in the context of animal conservation, with generating social interest and species–specific knowledge bases which in turn forms the basis for decisions on policy and funding priorities. In this sense, nonhuman charisma leads to what could be thought of as differing degrees of “political” influence for different animal taxa.

In the case of aquarium fish, the water adds a further element of detachment; while wild fish are even more remote, it’s still the case that even when in the same room as us, captive fish live visibly separate lives from our own, behind glass and in a different element.

Because they’re in glass tanks and they’re very separate you don’t kind of get that interaction quite the same as you would with a smaller mammal. [Consequently], it’s easier to kind of detach yourself a little bit emotionally from that fish. [interview with Gemma, senior animal technologist, 8 February 2018]

Such themes of perceived psychic distance are very common in discussions with technologists and others who work with zebrafish. For Fae, though, this results in a regrettable state of affairs. She argued that people’s ability to relate or attach to animals plays too big a role in driving priorities, to the detriment of fish welfare:

And I think this is what it is, I mean this is what I find annoying at times, it’s not really about the fish it’s what people can relate to and what people believe, and you know this is why we have these massive variations in welfare with fish because people just don’t get it and like they’re not thinking--, you know, if they can’t relate to it themselves I think it’s much harder. [Interview with Fae, aquarium facility manager, 27 February 2018]

It is difficult to connect these kinds of attitudes directly to the situation of the 3Rs. Harboring the kinds of conflicted emotions that we have been discussing of course does not preclude one from being active in pursuing 3Rs initiatives because people can be inconsistent and motivated by many different and competing prerogatives at once. But areas where these kinds of feelings amongst scientists and technicians towards fish do seem particularly likely to influence their actions or priorities, however, include the assessment of welfare and especially severity. Feeling emotionally and thus morally distant from fish in their alien habitats could conceivably compound the practitioners struggle to recognise, evaluate or correctly rank relevant signs of ill welfare or suffering.

3.3. Institutional Support and Capacity

The challenges of a contested evidence base, combined with general sense amongst both general “public” and those working with laboratory animals who find it “hard to care” about fish are compounded by (and arguably compound) the challenges that are experienced in mobilising institutional support for 3Rs initiatives. It is obvious that the kind and degree of institutional and economic support for fish-focused 3Rs initiatives are crucial to their success. A great deal could be said on this point, though much of this would apply to barriers to the development of the 3Rs for all species, not just fish or zebrafish. We focus here on only one main point with the claim that, as important as zebrafish are as a model organism, the size of the scientific and technical community it supports are still significantly smaller than the mouse community, and this means that it often does not possess the diversity of functions necessary to identify problems and credibly take forward solutions to them. In his observations, however, ex-HOI Colin, who has a lot of experience across the European Union as well as the UK, made this point most perspicuously. While gesturing towards the issue of funding, he explained that the problem is not simply that there was not enough of it, but that, in comparison to rodents, there was not yet within in the zebrafish world sufficient capacity to compete for it on even terms. Thus, Colin described a relative absence of what he called a “welfare support group” comprised of “vets, technicians [technologists], and welfare scientists” analogous to that which exists for what he called “the furries”. As he explained:

[fish-directed 3Rs research] is not sexy enough I don’t think and there’s not enough people involved to actually--, you know, because it’s difficult for technicians [technologists] to go to Wellcome [funders of biomedical science] and say, “Could I have a pot of money?” or even NC3Rs [National Centre for the 3Rs], whereas there’s a lot of people out there who’ve done animal welfare degrees or whatever and are interested in furries or whatever, and they know they’ll get funding. [interview with Colin, ex-Home Office Inspector, 26 June 2019]

And, he continued by pointing out that

[…] the other issue with fish people, the fish scientists are--, zebrafish scientists tend to be totally focused on zebrafish and the science, they’re not all that interested in welfare, they’re not behavioural type people, whereas in the furry world you’ve got behavioural type scientists who are interested in [welfare and the 3Rs]. [interview with Colin, ex-Home Office Inspector, 26 June 2019]

This is, of course, just the impression of one experienced observer, but it suggests an important point. Namely, that the diversity of available skills, interests and concomitant credibility is a function to some extent of the size of the extended community of practice. If this community is small, this represents an important sociological constraint on the development of new 3Rs interventions.

In our experience, many 3Rs-relevant welfare and husbandry initiatives are, in fact, driven “from the bottom up” by technologists and aquarium facility managers, not only academic research scientists. In the UK, centers of excellence have emerged around some, usually sizable aquariums managed by motivated individuals, though there is no particular pattern to this: in some cases, these individuals have backgrounds in general animal management or the management of rodents in particular but have become over time become leaders in the field of fish husbandry; in other cases, managers have backgrounds in aquatic biology, fish behavior or indeed biomedical research, and have moved into management. Many such initiatives are very local and small scale. The development of “DIY” environmental enrichment (see above) falls in this category, as does the move by one facility to introduce spirulina as an additive to fish diet (this has the effect of enhancing the lateral pink streak often expressed by male zebrafish. As a consequence, lab users are able to easily and reliably identify the sexes visually, instead of needing to anaesthetize them for closer examination as had been done routinely previously by some lab members). Other initiatives may begin life on the aquarium floor, but expand outwards: for example, the first Body Condition Scoring System for zebrafish was developed by staff at University College London’s zebrafish aquarium [ 118 ]. Initiatives such as the Zebrafish Health and Welfare Glossary, which promotes a standardised approached to welfare evaluation and nomenclature, have also been developed and primarily promoted by technical staff [ 119 ].

Local, technologist-led 3Rs initiatives are likely to vary considerably in the degree to which they are supported—in all senses of the word—by academic scientists and the wider bureaucratic, professional and institutional structures in which they emerge and to which they relate. While those who initiate and become involved in such efforts may have different or mixed motivations—from personal desire to change the lives of animals for the better, to a sense of professional responsibility or career ambition—it should be noted that in doing so they are liable sometimes to go beyond the proverbial “call of duty”, and there are consequently limits as to what can expected in terms of uptake and scale.

Academic researchers, of course, are not absent from this picture. Many 3Rs-geared ambitions for zebrafish would be impossible without specialist scientific expertise. In the UK, for example, Lynne Sneddon and colleagues have published influential data from numerous experiments focused explicitly on the possibility of deriving 3Rs interventions from them, for example, in areas such as analgesia research [ 81 , 120 , 121 , 122 , 123 ], enrichment [ 97 ] and automated welfare monitoring [ 124 ]. Academic researchers have also led in the development of protocols with direct 3Rs implications, for instance, concerning the genotyping of zebrafish by means of fin clips on very young larvae (3dpf) [ 125 ]. Indeed, looking at the database of funded research from the premier source of 3Rs funding in the UK—the NC3Rs—we find as of 2 December 2019 that with one exception, all funded zebrafish-based projects have established research scientists listed as their principal investigators. (See NC3Rs “Our Science” search results for the keyword “zebrafish”. The search was restricted to all kinds of grant and excluded training see shorturl.at/qL489. The exception is a veterinarian fronting a project investigating behavioral and physiological responses to fin clipping). This reflects the nature of applications received, and it is of course correct that awards for projects requiring detailed knowledge of scientific design are headed by those competent in this area, and is a reflection of active involvement by academics—notably, though, a large proportion of these awards focused on developing <5dpf embryos models, not on the benefits to fish as ends in themselves. It is of course possible that in some cases, technologists may be actively involved behind the scenes in some cases. Nevertheless, this should be set against Colin’s contention that those often most motivated to get involved with 3Rs work that benefits zebrafish do not have the means or credibility (including knowledge of research design, for example) to get the most desirable kinds of support for their work. Indeed, some may find themselves unable to apply for certain funding streams because of the non-academic classification of their roles and career trajectory, whatever their competence as scientists.

There seems certainly to be a niche or gap to be bridged between the local and less “science-heavy” 3Rs initiatives and those requiring special expertise in research design and data analyses, as well as specialist and expensive technologies. Developing and validating replacement models, for example, tends to be very “science-heavy”. Speaking of the importance of collaboration and capacity building in this area, one of our informants also described the need for what he called the “dovetailing” of interests, in particular, finding ways of bringing the scientific nous and technologies of academic researchers to bear on husbandry related problems in ways which could benefit everyone; scientists, technologists and fish. For example, the use of fluorescent markers of neuronal activity, as routinely done in many labs, could help to answer basic issues related to husbandry and welfare, such as the identification of appropriate endpoints (interview with Farol, aquarium facility manager, 21 March 2018). Efforts in this direction, however, face at least two general problems. Firstly, there is the problem of a lack of incentives for academics on a conventional scientific career path, given the lower status of such questions in the hierarchies embedded in the scientific reward system, and the relative ghettoisation of 3Rs and animal welfare science work generally. Secondly, the social stigma we have discussed that apparently continues to position fish as a means of achieving reductions or refinements, rather than as a focus for receiving 3Rs benefits. For Colin, at least, it is worth noting that an underlying reason for 3Rs/fish welfare research not being considered “sexy enough” (see above), is the attitude that “they’re only fish”, and thus do not warrant the attention (interview with Colin, ex-Home Office Inspector, 26 June 2019). These kinds of attitudes probably compound the basic problems of size and capacity suggested here.

4. Conclusions

While fish are rarely the “poster critters” of animal welfare campaigns, the welfare of aquatic species, in general, is increasingly becoming an object of social interest and concern, as well as scientific relevance. Moreover, given that ASPA makes no distinction between fish and other forms of vertebrate life in its definition of a protected animal, and that scientific opinion about the capacity of fish to suffer seriously is mounting, there is an ethical, regulatory and scientific remit for focusing on barriers to implementing and developing the 3Rs for fish. In this paper, we have shown how qualitative social science offers useful insights into the social drivers that could be influencing thinking, prioritisation and implementation of the 3Rs with respect to laboratory fish welfare.

Firstly, we highlighted the importance of narratives about knowledge, consensus and disagreement. In our examples, limited knowledge of what constitutes appropriate environmental enrichment for zebrafish and disagreements over the ability of fish to feel pain and suffer, can hamper the implementation of refinements, despite regulatory encouragement. Furthermore, an awareness of where knowledge about what constitutes “good welfare” is produced and who it is promoted by can be as important as the knowledge itself in shaping its reception and the consequent implementation (or not) of refinements. This is seen, for example, in the division between those with a lot of experience with mammals who are inclined towards “putting things in tanks” as they are used to seeing “things in cages”, and those who have worked mainly with fish and suspect other who suggest more subtle enrichments such as lighting regimes and water chemistry are more important. We also described how the existence of controversy on the subject of fish pain could be an underlying factor explaining the unwillingness amongst those responsible for implementing analgesia protocols, for example. We also proposed that there is a kind of scale of sentience, which ranks fish below other vertebrates and which shapes attitudes to fish welfare despite having little or no objective basis.

Secondly, we discussed how relationships and attitudes to fish, as well as beliefs about the extent to which those attitudes are shared with a wider ‘socially sentient’ public, may be important to mediating decisions about their use, their deployment as an alternative for other animals with the same legal status (such as mice) and, by extension, the urgency and relevance of 3Rs initiatives. For example, we noted how the apparently relatively low priority given to fish welfare amongst animal welfare and rights organisations is often linked to a perceived lack of broader public concern. Regulators may also follow suit, despite their best intentions and efforts. In this context, those who work with fish in laboratory settings often act as advocates for fish to be treated equally with other animal denizens of the lab. However, even within laboratory settings technologists, researchers and vets can struggle to relate to fish and find themselves questioning the extent to which they have internalized an image of fish as somehow less sentient and capable of suffering than mammals. This highlights the importance of a degree of self-awareness and reflexivity amongst those responsible for assessing fish welfare and implementing the 3Rs (already evident in the words of many of the those we spoke to) about how practices are shaped by social beliefs, experiences and values as well as scientific expertise.

Finally, we noted how more general trends towards a lack of investment and research interests in the 3Rs, recognised across the animal research community, are compounded by specific issues associated with the overall capacity of zebrafish community to engage successfully in 3Rs initiatives. In this context, we also presented the claim that zebrafish have not hitherto been perceived as “sexy enough” to attract the attention of enough credible experts in animal welfare science and animal behavior who are interested in pursuing 3Rs-related work. In our experience, moreover, many 3Rs-relevant welfare and husbandry initiatives are also driven “from the bottom up” by technologists and aquarium facility managers, not only by academic research scientists. This led to our informants highlighting the need for further collaboration and capacity building in this area, bringing the scientific knowledge and approaches of academic researchers to bear on husbandry related problems in particular, in partnership with motivated technical staff.

Acknowledgments

Penny Hawkins, Hibba Mazhary and colleagues, collaborators and advisors on the Animal Research Nexus project, including Alexandra Palmer who helped conduct some of the interviews cited in this research. We would also especially like to thank everyone who gave their time to participate in our research, who shared their knowledge, and who often hosted us at their places of work.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, R.M. and B.G.; methodology, R.M. and B.G.; investigation, R.M. and B.G.; writing—original draft preparation, R.M. and B.G.; writing—review and editing, R.M. and B.G.; project administration, B.G.; funding acquisition, B.G. and the Animal Research Nexus team.

This research was funded by the Wellcome Trust, grant number 205393/A/16/Z as a part of the Animal Research Nexus project. The APC was funded by a Wellcome Trust Block Grant to the University of Oxford.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

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Fishing is an outdoor activity that involves catching fish using different techniques such as angling, netting, trapping or hand gathering. It can be done in various water bodies such as rivers, lakes, oceans, and even ponds. Fishing can be a leisure activity, a sport, or a means of livelihood. It is also a popular pastime that is enjoyed by people of all ages and skill levels. Fishing requires patience, concentration, and knowledge about different fish species, their habitats, and feeding habits. It is also a way of connecting with nature, enjoying the peacefulness of the environment and spending time outdoors.

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Spatial Variations in Aquatic Insect Community Structure in the Winam Gulf of Lake Victoria, Kenya

Abstract Background. Aquatic insect community structure is dynamic due to threats by anthropogenic activities coupled with changing climatic conditions. The insect’s survival is dependent on the substrate, water quality, and environmental effects. The changes in water quality influence their distribution and abundance and are reflected in spatial and temporal trends. This study sought to document the effects of spatial variation on aquatic insects in Winam Gulf of Lake Victoria, Kenya. Mat...

Physicochemical Characteristics of undrainable Water Dams Utilized for Fish rearing In The Semi-Arid Naromoru Area, Central Kenya

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Moving Toward Sustainable Aquaculture for Rural Sustainability and Development in Kenya. A Case of Vihiga County

Kenya has a tremendous great potential for growth in the aquaculture sector. To attain the sustainable development goal of zero hunger, the government is needed to encourage fish culture among the rural communities. The study's objective is to investigate the elements that affect the sustainable development of fresh water Aquaculture in Kenya a Vihiga County case. The purpose of the research is to determine how production characteristics and extension affect the long-term sustainability of fr...

A Comparison of the Growth of the Nile Tilapia (Oreochromis Niloticus, Linnaeus, 1758) Fingerlings Fed with Blue Crown® And Skretting® Commercial Feeds

ABSTRACTA comparison of the growth of the Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus)fingerlings fed with Blue crown® and Skretting® commercial feeds was studiedfor a period of 8 weeks. A total of sixty fingerlings of Oreochromis niloticuswere used. The treatments showed significant difference (p0.05)between   the   two   feeds.  Some   water   quality   parameters   assessed   during   theexperiment indicated that only the dissolved oxygen was significantly differentbetween the two treatments (p

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We are Making Progress on Two Major Recreational Fishing Data Collection Initiatives

August 02, 2024

NOAA Fisheries Office of Science and Technology Director Evan Howell provides a progress update on the ongoing study of the Fishing Effort Survey and the collaborative initiative to re-envision the recreational fishing data partnership

We may be in the dog days of summer, but I am pleased to share that progress continues on two high-visibility recreational fishing data collection initiatives — our Fishing Effort Survey study and the collaborative initiative to re-envision the partnership. Earlier this summer, I provided an initial update where I shared the desire and need for our recreational fishing data collection partnership to be “nationally coherent and regionally specific” and for improvements to be informed through our partners and the recreational fishing community.

My most important takeaway for you right now is that both of these initiatives remain on track.

First, the Fishing Effort Study. We are entering the eighth month of survey administration as part of our year-long large-scale study to determine differences in respondent recall and resulting recreational fishing effort estimates between the current Fishing Effort Survey design and a revised design. The revised FES design being tested is producing improved data quality in alignment with prior pilot studies . Two main points: We continue to see a large reduction in reporting errors and illogical responses. Also, respondents have been less likely to indicate more trips for the 2-month fishing reference period than for the 12-month reference period. Please note that there is still a large amount of data to collect and analyze before fully informed comparisons can be made, including the direction and magnitude of differences in effort estimates. However, we are optimistic this study will inform considerable, near-term improvements to the Fishing Effort Survey and resulting effort estimates.

Regarding the timeline, we plan to conclude data collection for the study by the end of the year. In summer 2025, we will produce report outlining key findings. Ultimately, in 2026, we will determine if and how a new design will be implemented in collaboration with our partners and pending favorable study results and peer review.

For our second major initiative, we continue to re-evaluate our recreational fishing data collection partnership approaches. As many of you know, the goal is to transition to a new, collaboratively developed vision for the state-federal partnership in 2026 — one that better meets regionally specific data needs for sustainable, adaptive fisheries management.

So far this year, we’ve held four virtual briefings with approximately 150 key partners and members of the recreational fishing community across the nation to introduce the effort and garner initial feedback on the re-envisioning process and objectives. Out of these sessions, a few key themes emerged, including the need to:

• Build trust and credibility with state partners and the angling community
• Acknowledge and seek regional data collection flexibility
• Determine allocation of limited resources through regional data collection priorities
• Make sustainable fisheries decisions based on more timely, precise, and accurate data
• Properly integrate and compare different data streams to best inform stock assessments
• Develop adaptive management frameworks that better consider data uncertainty and limitations
• Continue work to improve recreational fishing effort estimates, and consider novel technologies to track or compare recreational fishing effort estimates
• Establish transparent, consistent, and centralized data management programs for all partners

This summer and fall, we will host additional discussions with key partners and schedule listening sessions during specific regional fishery management council meetings. If you are interested in participating in one of these listening sessions, please reference your regional Council website for information. In early 2025, we plan to designate working groups, and in summer 2025, we anticipate hosting a series of regional workshops to develop a shared vision and action plan for release by the end of the year.

As we work through the re-envisioning process, we will continue to incorporate immediate, positive changes along the way.

Enjoy the rest of your summer. I will stay in touch.

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• NOAA Shares Plans to Re-envision Recreational Fishing Data Collection

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Opinion Guest Essay

Too Much of Our Seafood Has a Dark Secret

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By Paul Greenberg and Carl Safina

Mr. Greenberg and Dr. Safina have been writing books, articles and essays about the world’s oceans for three decades.

• Aug. 11, 2024

This essay is part of What to Eat on a Burning Planet, a series exploring bold ideas to secure our food supply. Read more about this project in a note from Eliza Barclay, Opinion’s climate editor.

Not that long ago, if you saw a piece of fish on your plate, you wouldn’t have thought to ask where it came from or whether it was sustainable.

That began to change in the 1990s as conservation groups fought to protect all kinds of life in the ocean from overfishing. After persuading Congress to create and enforce strict plans to bring back species, they set in motion a virtuous cycle that made seafood, from the mighty swordfish to the humble sea scallop , abundant again. New rules for other species have had similarly positive effects. Sea turtles that once drowned in shrimp nets can now escape. Fewer diving seabirds are getting caught on fishing lines. And limits on fishing smaller species such as menhaden mean that whales off our coasts have more to eat and today can be seen cavorting within sight of the Statue of Liberty. What’s more, American commercial and recreational fisheries generated 35 percent more sales in 2022 than in 2018 .

But walk into your local supermarket, and you may still be buying snapper blasted from their reefs by Indonesian fishermen using dynamite or illegally caught yellowfin tuna and squid. U.S. fisheries may be much improved, but up to 80 percent of the fish and shellfish on American plates is imported . Much of it comes via obscure international seafood conglomerates that purchase fish from companies that have been accused of fishing illegally and profiting from forced labor, as the nonprofit Outlaw Ocean Project has documented.

We in wealthy nations unwittingly support these abuses by using the world’s supply of fish as if it were a limitless line of credit. But this credit is running out. The global catch of fish and other wildlife in the ocean peaked in the 1990s and has since drifted steadily downward. Soon, not even forced labor may be able to squeeze profit out of the remaining wild fish.

Expanding fish farming, or aquaculture, was once thought to be a potential solution to this problem, but it has also not, as hoped, given wild fish the break they need. Salmon and shrimp, Americans’ favorite farmed seafoods, are still fed wild fish caught in poorly regulated foreign waters . Highly nutritious fish, such as anchovies and sardines, that make up 20 percent to 30 percent of the global catch are fed to salmon and shrimp — a staggering waste of protein.

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Health Inequality and Health Types

While health affects many economic outcomes, its dynamics are still poorly understood. We use k means clustering, a machine learning technique, and data from the Health and Retirement Study to identify health types during middle and old age. We identify five health types: the vigorous resilient, the fair-health resilient, the fair-health vulnerable, the frail resilient, and the frail vulnerable. They are characterized by different starting health and health and mortality trajectories. Our five health types account for 84% of the variation in health trajectories and are not explained by observable characteristics, such as age, marital status, education, gender, race, health-related behaviors, and health insurance status, but rather, by one’s past health dynamics. We also show that health types are important drivers of health and mortality heterogeneity and dynamics. Our results underscore the importance of better understanding health type formation and of modeling it appropriately to properly evaluate the effects of health on people’s decisions and the implications of policy reforms.

We are grateful to Manuel Arellano, Marco Bassetto, Pamela Giustinelli, John B. Jones, Rory McGee, Vincent Mor, Michela Tincani, Martin Garcia Vazquez, Fan Wang, and Fang Yang for useful comments and suggestions. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the CEPR, any agency of the federal government, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, or the Federal Reserve System.

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A Plan to Promote Defense Research at Minority-Serving Institutions

Engaging the full breadth of talent in the United States is an important component of growing and sustaining dominance in research and development (R&D) and supporting national security into the future. By 2030, one-fifth of Americans will be above age 65 and at or nearing retirement from the workforce. Estimates of race and ethnic demographic changes between 2016 and 2030 show a decrease in the non-Hispanic white population and an increase in terms of both number and share of all other demographic groups, and this trend will continue to increase. These population shifts signal a citizenry and workforce that will be increasingly diverse. For the United States to maintain its global competitiveness and protect its security interests, targeted support is needed to cultivate talent from communities throughout the nation.

The nation's more than 800 Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) provide an impactful and cost-effective opportunity to focus on cultivating the current and future U.S. population for careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), including in fields critical to the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). At the request of DOD, this report identifies tangible frameworks for increasing the participation of MSIs in defense-related research and development and identifies the necessary mechanisms for elevating minority serving institutions to R1 status (doctoral universities with very high research activity) on the Carnegie Classifications of Institutions of Higher Education scale.

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• Building Research Capacity at Minority Institutions: Figures of Research Expenditure and Facility Space by Field
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How to cite ChatGPT

Use discount code STYLEBLOG15 for 15% off APA Style print products with free shipping in the United States.

We, the APA Style team, are not robots. We can all pass a CAPTCHA test , and we know our roles in a Turing test . And, like so many nonrobot human beings this year, we’ve spent a fair amount of time reading, learning, and thinking about issues related to large language models, artificial intelligence (AI), AI-generated text, and specifically ChatGPT . We’ve also been gathering opinions and feedback about the use and citation of ChatGPT. Thank you to everyone who has contributed and shared ideas, opinions, research, and feedback.

In this post, I discuss situations where students and researchers use ChatGPT to create text and to facilitate their research, not to write the full text of their paper or manuscript. We know instructors have differing opinions about how or even whether students should use ChatGPT, and we’ll be continuing to collect feedback about instructor and student questions. As always, defer to instructor guidelines when writing student papers. For more about guidelines and policies about student and author use of ChatGPT, see the last section of this post.

Quoting or reproducing the text created by ChatGPT in your paper

If you’ve used ChatGPT or other AI tools in your research, describe how you used the tool in your Method section or in a comparable section of your paper. For literature reviews or other types of essays or response or reaction papers, you might describe how you used the tool in your introduction. In your text, provide the prompt you used and then any portion of the relevant text that was generated in response.

Unfortunately, the results of a ChatGPT “chat” are not retrievable by other readers, and although nonretrievable data or quotations in APA Style papers are usually cited as personal communications , with ChatGPT-generated text there is no person communicating. Quoting ChatGPT’s text from a chat session is therefore more like sharing an algorithm’s output; thus, credit the author of the algorithm with a reference list entry and the corresponding in-text citation.

When prompted with “Is the left brain right brain divide real or a metaphor?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that although the two brain hemispheres are somewhat specialized, “the notation that people can be characterized as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ is considered to be an oversimplification and a popular myth” (OpenAI, 2023).

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

You may also put the full text of long responses from ChatGPT in an appendix of your paper or in online supplemental materials, so readers have access to the exact text that was generated. It is particularly important to document the exact text created because ChatGPT will generate a unique response in each chat session, even if given the same prompt. If you create appendices or supplemental materials, remember that each should be called out at least once in the body of your APA Style paper.

When given a follow-up prompt of “What is a more accurate representation?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that “different brain regions work together to support various cognitive processes” and “the functional specialization of different regions can change in response to experience and environmental factors” (OpenAI, 2023; see Appendix A for the full transcript).

Creating a reference to ChatGPT or other AI models and software

The in-text citations and references above are adapted from the reference template for software in Section 10.10 of the Publication Manual (American Psychological Association, 2020, Chapter 10). Although here we focus on ChatGPT, because these guidelines are based on the software template, they can be adapted to note the use of other large language models (e.g., Bard), algorithms, and similar software.

The reference and in-text citations for ChatGPT are formatted as follows:

• Parenthetical citation: (OpenAI, 2023)
• Narrative citation: OpenAI (2023)

Let’s break that reference down and look at the four elements (author, date, title, and source):

Author: The author of the model is OpenAI.

Date: The date is the year of the version you used. Following the template in Section 10.10, you need to include only the year, not the exact date. The version number provides the specific date information a reader might need.

Title: The name of the model is “ChatGPT,” so that serves as the title and is italicized in your reference, as shown in the template. Although OpenAI labels unique iterations (i.e., ChatGPT-3, ChatGPT-4), they are using “ChatGPT” as the general name of the model, with updates identified with version numbers.

The version number is included after the title in parentheses. The format for the version number in ChatGPT references includes the date because that is how OpenAI is labeling the versions. Different large language models or software might use different version numbering; use the version number in the format the author or publisher provides, which may be a numbering system (e.g., Version 2.0) or other methods.

Bracketed text is used in references for additional descriptions when they are needed to help a reader understand what’s being cited. References for a number of common sources, such as journal articles and books, do not include bracketed descriptions, but things outside of the typical peer-reviewed system often do. In the case of a reference for ChatGPT, provide the descriptor “Large language model” in square brackets. OpenAI describes ChatGPT-4 as a “large multimodal model,” so that description may be provided instead if you are using ChatGPT-4. Later versions and software or models from other companies may need different descriptions, based on how the publishers describe the model. The goal of the bracketed text is to briefly describe the kind of model to your reader.

Source: When the publisher name and the author name are the same, do not repeat the publisher name in the source element of the reference, and move directly to the URL. This is the case for ChatGPT. The URL for ChatGPT is https://chat.openai.com/chat . For other models or products for which you may create a reference, use the URL that links as directly as possible to the source (i.e., the page where you can access the model, not the publisher’s homepage).

Other questions about citing ChatGPT

You may have noticed the confidence with which ChatGPT described the ideas of brain lateralization and how the brain operates, without citing any sources. I asked for a list of sources to support those claims and ChatGPT provided five references—four of which I was able to find online. The fifth does not seem to be a real article; the digital object identifier given for that reference belongs to a different article, and I was not able to find any article with the authors, date, title, and source details that ChatGPT provided. Authors using ChatGPT or similar AI tools for research should consider making this scrutiny of the primary sources a standard process. If the sources are real, accurate, and relevant, it may be better to read those original sources to learn from that research and paraphrase or quote from those articles, as applicable, than to use the model’s interpretation of them.

We’ve also received a number of other questions about ChatGPT. Should students be allowed to use it? What guidelines should instructors create for students using AI? Does using AI-generated text constitute plagiarism? Should authors who use ChatGPT credit ChatGPT or OpenAI in their byline? What are the copyright implications ?

On these questions, researchers, editors, instructors, and others are actively debating and creating parameters and guidelines. Many of you have sent us feedback, and we encourage you to continue to do so in the comments below. We will also study the policies and procedures being established by instructors, publishers, and academic institutions, with a goal of creating guidelines that reflect the many real-world applications of AI-generated text.

For questions about manuscript byline credit, plagiarism, and related ChatGPT and AI topics, the APA Style team is seeking the recommendations of APA Journals editors. APA Style guidelines based on those recommendations will be posted on this blog and on the APA Style site later this year.

Update: APA Journals has published policies on the use of generative AI in scholarly materials .

We, the APA Style team humans, appreciate your patience as we navigate these unique challenges and new ways of thinking about how authors, researchers, and students learn, write, and work with new technologies.

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

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Study reveals ways in which 40Hz sensory stimulation may preserve brain’s “white matter”

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Early-stage trials in Alzheimer’s disease patients and studies in mouse models of the disease have suggested positive impacts on pathology and symptoms from exposure to light and sound presented at the “gamma” band frequency of 40 hertz (Hz). A new study zeroes in on how 40Hz sensory stimulation helps to sustain an essential process in which the signal-sending branches of neurons, called axons, are wrapped in a fatty insulation called myelin. Often called the brain’s “white matter,” myelin protects axons and insures better electrical signal transmission in brain circuits.

“Previous publications from our lab have mainly focused on neuronal protection,” says Li-Huei Tsai , Picower Professor in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT and senior author of the new open-access study in Nature Communications . Tsai also leads MIT’s Aging Brain Initiative. “But this study shows that it’s not just the gray matter, but also the white matter that’s protected by this method.”

This year Cognito Therapeutics, the spinoff company that licensed MIT’s sensory stimulation technology, published phase II human trial results in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease indicating that 40Hz light and sound stimulation significantly slowed the loss of myelin in volunteers with Alzheimer’s. Also this year, Tsai’s lab published a study showing that gamma sensory stimulation helped mice withstand neurological effects of chemotherapy medicines, including by preserving myelin. In the new study, members of Tsai’s lab led by former postdoc Daniela Rodrigues Amorim used a common mouse model of myelin loss — a diet with the chemical cuprizone — to explore how sensory stimulation preserves myelination.

Amorim and Tsai’s team found that 40Hz light and sound not only preserved myelination in the brains of cuprizone-exposed mice, it also appeared to protect oligodendrocytes (the cells that myelinate neural axons), sustain the electrical performance of neurons, and preserve a key marker of axon structural integrity. When the team looked into the molecular underpinnings of these benefits, they found clear signs of specific mechanisms including preservation of neural circuit connections called synapses; a reduction in a cause of oligodendrocyte death called “ferroptosis;” reduced inflammation; and an increase in the ability of microglia brain cells to clean up myelin damage so that new myelin could be restored.

“Gamma stimulation promotes a healthy environment,” says Amorim, who is now a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Galway in Ireland. “There are several ways we are seeing different effects.”

The findings suggest that gamma sensory stimulation may help not only Alzheimer’s disease patients but also people battling other diseases involving myelin loss, such as multiple sclerosis, the authors wrote in the study.

Maintaining myelin

To conduct the study, Tsai and Amorim’s team fed some male mice a diet with cuprizone and gave other male mice a normal diet for six weeks. Halfway into that period, when cuprizone is known to begin causing its most acute effects on myelination, they exposed some mice from each group to gamma sensory stimulation for the remaining three weeks. In this way they had four groups: completely unaffected mice, mice that received no cuprizone but did get gamma stimulation, mice that received cuprizone and constant (but not 40Hz) light and sound as a control, and mice that received cuprizone and also gamma stimulation.

After the six weeks elapsed, the scientists measured signs of myelination throughout the brains of the mice in each group. Mice that weren’t fed cuprizone maintained healthy levels, as expected. Mice that were fed cuprizone and didn’t receive 40Hz gamma sensory stimulation showed drastic levels of myelin loss. Cuprizone-fed mice that received 40Hz stimulation retained significantly more myelin, rivaling the health of mice never fed cuprizone by some, but not all, measures.

The researchers also looked at numbers of oligodendrocytes to see if they survived better with sensory stimulation. Several measures revealed that in mice fed cuprizone, oligodendrocytes in the corpus callosum region of the brain (a key point for the transit of neural signals because it connects the brain’s hemispheres) were markedly reduced. But in mice fed cuprizone and also treated with gamma stimulation, the number of cells were much closer to healthy levels.

Electrophysiological tests among neural axons in the corpus callosum showed that gamma sensory stimulation was associated with improved electrical performance in cuprizone-fed mice who received gamma stimulation compared to cuprizone-fed mice left untreated by 40Hz stimulation. And when researchers looked in the anterior cingulate cortex region of the brain, they saw that MAP2, a protein that signals the structural integrity of axons, was much better preserved in mice that received cuprizone and gamma stimulation compared to cuprizone-fed mice who did not.

A key goal of the study was to identify possible ways in which 40Hz sensory stimulation may protect myelin.

To find out, the researchers conducted a sweeping assessment of protein expression in each mouse group and identified which proteins were differentially expressed based on cuprizone diet and exposure to gamma frequency stimulation. The analysis revealed distinct sets of effects between the cuprizone mice exposed to control stimulation and cuprizone-plus-gamma mice.

A highlight of one set of effects was the increase in MAP2 in gamma-treated cuprizone-fed mice. A highlight of another set was that cuprizone mice who received control stimulation showed a substantial deficit in expression of proteins associated with synapses. The gamma-treated cuprizone-fed mice did not show any significant loss, mirroring results in a 2019 Alzheimer’s 40Hz study that showed synaptic preservation. This result is important, the researchers wrote, because neural circuit activity, which depends on maintaining synapses, is associated with preserving myelin. They confirmed the protein expression results by looking directly at brain tissues.

Another set of protein expression results hinted at another important mechanism: ferroptosis. This phenomenon, in which errant metabolism of iron leads to a lethal buildup of reactive oxygen species in cells, is a known problem for oligodendrocytes in the cuprizone mouse model. Among the signs was an increase in cuprizone-fed, control stimulation mice in expression of the protein HMGB1, which is a marker of ferroptosis-associated damage that triggers an inflammatory response. Gamma stimulation, however, reduced levels of HMGB1.

Looking more deeply at the cellular and molecular response to cuprizone demyelination and the effects of gamma stimulation, the team assessed gene expression using single-cell RNA sequencing technology. They found that astrocytes and microglia became very inflammatory in cuprizone-control mice but gamma stimulation calmed that response. Fewer cells became inflammatory and direct observations of tissue showed that microglia became more proficient at clearing away myelin debris, a key step in effecting repairs.

The team also learned more about how oligodendrocytes in cuprizone-fed mice exposed to 40Hz sensory stimulation managed to survive better. Expression of protective proteins such as HSP70 increased and as did expression of GPX4, a master regulator of processes that constrain ferroptosis.

In addition to Amorim and Tsai, the paper’s other authors are Lorenzo Bozzelli, TaeHyun Kim, Liwang Liu, Oliver Gibson, Cheng-Yi Yang, Mitch Murdock, Fabiola Galiana-Meléndez, Brooke Schatz, Alexis Davison, Md Rezaul Islam, Dong Shin Park, Ravikiran M. Raju, Fatema Abdurrob, Alissa J. Nelson, Jian Min Ren, Vicky Yang and Matthew P. Stokes.

Fundacion Bancaria la Caixa, The JPB Foundation, The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, the Carol and Gene Ludwig Family Foundation, Lester A. Gimpelson, Eduardo Eurnekian, The Dolby Family, Kathy and Miguel Octavio, the Marc Haas Foundation, Ben Lenail and Laurie Yoler, and the U.S. National Institutes of Health provided funding for the study.

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