Should we be more humanitarian towards the fish we eat?

[brewer]

I was horned by a catfish as a child. It's been game on ever since then. 

They started it!

[The Grand Nudger]

I chose the option that they deserve a humane death. But I was toying with "other." Being extracted from the sea and suffocated is far more human than being made to live in a stall in which one cannot turn around for one's entire life, after all.

-as it turns out..the species that show the greatest potential for global development are tight schoolers known for their docility and tolerance for poor water quality.  

This allows for greater stocking density in the absence of any known detriment to their full range of healthy behaviors.  The only thing that a tank reared tilapia is not allowed to do, is procreate.  They try....but you scrub those fry out with a couple bluegill.  It's a hard knock life, for fry.   

If those tank reared fish are then transferred from the growout to a cold gassing unit - the rate of the gas release can be low enough to provide the tilapia tim to clean their bowls in the presence of cold water and absence of food..while slowly rendering them unconscious.  If it's done for too long, they begin to stop breathing, and die - but at slightly variable rates (some fish don;t go down as easy as others).  So..you need human observers on hand or constant spotchecks.  They need to be transferred from that tank to the processing area when they lose school cohesion and cease to propel themselves through the water..but before their respiratory system fails.  You can't miss it..it looks like a snapshot in time in the barrel.  None of them are moving.but they're all still in vertical alignment at a consistent depth.  

In process, the first position can be a killing puncture.  It can be done with the filet knife.....but since we don't actually want brains contaminating our product (for a variety of quality and legal reasons)..it's best done as a single station with a spike - filet can be it's own thing with it's own implements.  

There's a strong economic incentive to humane rearing and tank culture.  Or...at least, there would be, if we weren't allowing the collapse of our wild stocks to mask the fact that we do not produce a fraction of what we consume as seafood.  Stress effects growth rates..which effects the value of the end product, and also the cost of the feed at known rates.  However, a humane operation has a noticeably higher installation cost, as well as disproportionately large labor costs to operate.  In short, they can't compete with a factory ship given license to loot and plunder, lol.  To say we -need- them, though..is an understatement.  We fret about the devastation that civilization has brought to terrestrial species and ecosystems.....but, because we don't see it, it's a hidden world..even conceptually, to us, we don't realize that we've turned our waterways into a global desert already.

[Joods]

I like tuna.

And salmon. Yeah. That too.

[Foxaèr]

Mahi Mahi

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The last fish I ate had been eating me immediately prior. (Technically debriding a wound, but I was hungry.)