Promoting Better Fishing Standards

The Carefish/catch project intended to assess the several impacts fisheries have on fish welfare and define the aspects with most potential to reduce animal suffering in different fisheries and for different species. Despite aquaculture has been under significant scrutiny in terms of animal welfare in recent years, when it comes to fisheries, this issue is generally absent from the public debate and of people’s concerns in the moment of purchasing seafood. The CareFishCatch project wants to tackle this issue seriously and in an integrated way, being developed by an international consortium, led by fair-fish International (Switzerland) and including the Fish Ethology and Welfare Group (Portugal), Centre of Marine Sciences (Portugal), Friend of the Sea (Italy) and DeMoS Institute (France). The team intends to: 1) Assess global animal welfare impacts in fisheries; 2) Identify the potential of reducing animal suffering in various fishing methods and species; 3) Analyse the economic feasibility of the improvements suggested; 4) Raise problem and solution awareness in general and specific audience; 5) Implement guidelines into the Friend of the Sea certification scheme