The Latest Data: How Many Fishes Does Canada Kill Annually?

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An estimated 10.1 billion aquatic animals died for food in Canada in 2022, according to an analysis done by Animal Justice based on government statistics. This shocking figure is more than 12 times the 841 million land animals killed that year, and similar to the estimated 10.2 billion aquatic animals who died in 2021. 

Fishes and other aquatic animals like octopuses, lobsters, crabs, and shrimps are complex, sentient animals capable of experiencing a range of emotions and sensations. They are curious, intelligent, and often engage in complex social behaviours and problem-solving activities. Like us, aquatic animals have nervous systems and can feel pain, yet there are few laws to protect them from suffering at the hands of the fishing and fish farming industry.

How We Got the Numbers

In government statistics, aquatic animals aren’t counted as individuals—instead, the industry merely counts their collective weight in tonnes. This makes it difficult to understand the true impact of death, suffering, and destruction on individual animals caused by fishing and farming aquatic animals for food.

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The annual commercial landing weights reported by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) are grouped by species. We divided the total landing weight of each species by the average weight of an individual member of that species. This gave us a rough estimate of the number of individuals killed each year in the aquaculture and fishing industries.* Sadly, the analysis shows that an overwhelming number of individual aquatic animals lost their lives to commercial fishing.

Rampant Cruelty & Environmental Destruction Caused By the Fishing Industry

About 600 million of these fishes are finfish species like salmon, tuna, perch, cod, and catfish. They are either caught in the wild or bred in fish farms—both notorious for environmental harm and animal cruelty. 

Fish Farming in Canada

Over 31 million of these finfishes came from fish farms, also known as aquaculture—where a large number of fishes are kept in small indoor tanks, or netted enclosures in natural bodies of water, like lakes or bays. These conditions are highly stressful and can lead to increased aggression, high mortality rates, and disease outbreaks—leading to overuse of antibiotics. 

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In 2024, Animal Justice released troubling undercover video footage from fish farms—a caviar farm in British Columbia, a so-called “sustainable” salmon farm in Nova Scotia.The video showed widespread animal suffering and appalling practices—from fishes being sliced open while still alive, to being violently stomped to death for no reason.

Fish farms also pollute surrounding waterways through the discharge of waste products, excess nutrients, and chemicals. Pollution from fish farms can cause toxic algal blooms and degrading water quality, which can harm other marine animals as well as human health. 

Commercial Fishing in Canada

Shrimps, classified as shellfish, make up the vast majority of aquatic lives targeted for human consumption, with an estimated 7.5 billion shrimps killed in 2022 alone. Shrimps have the capacity for complex decision making, feel pain, and likely experience emotions. Despite this, they suffer terribly within the food industry, enduring prolonged and agonizing deaths and awful farming practices. Shrimp trawling is among the worst fishing methods for both ecosystem destruction and bycatch—the large, weighted net tears up habitats and captures almost every living creature in its path. 

More than half a billion of the finfishes killed in Canada in 2022 were caught in the wild by the commercial fishing industry. This often depletes fish populations in the ocean faster than they can recover, threatening biodiversity and the balance of marine life. There are countless examples of fish populations collapsing due to commercial fisheries, such as the Atlantic cod. Destructive fishing practices like bottom trawling—where large nets with heavy weights are dragged along the seafloor—also devastate ocean habitats, destroying coral reefs and other vital ecosystems. 

When fishes from deep waters are ripped from their homes in the ocean, it’s common for them to suffer extremely painful decompression that can rupture their swim bladders, bulge their eyes, and push their stomachs out of their mouths. 

In commercial fishing, non-target animals like sea turtles, whales, dolphins, and seabirds are regularly caught in nets intended for other species. Some estimates state that 40 percent of all sea creatures caught in the ocean are bycatch. Notably, Animal Justice’s estimates listed here do not include bycatch, though Oceana estimates that accounting for bycatch may nearly double the number of lives lost to the commercial fishing industry. 

A manta ray lays suffocating amidst fish and bycatch.
Photo: Selene Magnolia Gatti | We Animals

Ghost Gear

These estimates also leave out the aquatic animals who die when their habitat is destroyed by trawlers or fish farm pollution, and the animals ensnared and killed by “ghost gear”—nets and other fishing gear that are lost or abandoned at sea by both fish farming and commercial fishing. Ghost gear kills millions of animals every year, and is one of the largest and most harmful sources of plastic pollution in the ocean. 

Science is clear that fishes feel pain. Their nervous systems have sensory receptors to detect harmful stimuli, brains to process this information, and they avoid harmful situations based on past experiences. Fishes are sentient beings who deserve to be protected from the heartbreaking, unimaginable suffering they face at the hands of industries. 

By law, land animals who are killed for food must be stunned first. However, there are no legal standards to prevent aquatic animals from suffering while they are fished, farmed, or slaughtered. Animal Justice’s mission is to overhaul the legal system to better reflect our country’s values of compassion and justice for sentient beings. You can help make a difference in the lives of fishes today by leaving them, and all other animals, off your plate. 



*We use average weights for each species from the DFO Aquatic Species Identification website, and for those species who aren’t listed, we found credible sources elsewhere. In cases where a range was given, we used the mean. In cases where only maximum weights were listed, we used those numbers. As a result, the estimate as a whole leans toward a conservative total.

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