This year, Respect for Fish Day brought communities together in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, California, to celebrate fishes and advocate for their rights and protection. These events encouraged participants to rethink their relationship with marine animals and urged the public to stop eating fishes as a principle of respect and compassion for all sentient beings.

Visitors engaged with interactive activities, participated in outreach conversations, and competed to win prizes. These activities sparked curiosity, inspired empathy, and educated on why fishes deserve freedom too. Research confirms that fishes experience stress, pain, fear, and pleasure, and are far more remarkable than commonly believed. 

Some fishes can navigate mazes, camouflage themselves, solve puzzles, and remember solutions for months or even years. Many detect electrical fields, ultraviolet light, or water vibrations to hunt or evade predators. Several species also show long-term memory and learning: salmon travel thousands of miles upstream to spawn, goldfish form cognitive maps, channel catfish remember voice cues linked to feeding for up to five years, and rainbowfish recall escape routes for nearly a year.

Fishes also have emotionally rich social lives. Clownfish form bonded groups with strict hierarchies, recognize mates after separation, communicate with sounds, and show stress when isolated. Angelfish remember dozens of individuals, maintain social ties, and feel distress when group dynamics change.

The fishing industry kills up to 2.7 trillion fish annually — more than any other animal — while its vessels burn vast amounts of fossil fuels, worsening the climate crisis. Bottom trawling, using massive fishing nets often miles wide, devastates ocean floors and coral reefs, killing everything in their path, including countless non-target animals such as dolphins, turtles, seabirds, whales, and sharks.

“Ghost nets” drift for years, killing all manner of marine animals, while slowly leaching toxins into the water. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is largely composed of fishing-related plastic waste, with a 2022 study estimating that up to 86% of the debris originates from fishing activities.

“Wild caught” is a feel-good marketing label, suggesting sustainability, yet whether a fish is confined in filthy, overcrowded fish farms, suffocated in a large net, or impaled on a hook on a fishing trip, they all experience intense pain and suffering when killed.

A wide variety of plant-based options now replicate the flavor and texture of fish. Tofu marinated in seaweed and lemon makes great “fish” fillets or tuna salad, banana blossoms can be fried into vegan "fish" and chips, and hearts of palm can be flaked into mock crab or ceviche. For Omega-3s, try flaxseeds, chia seeds, walnuts, hemp seeds, algae oil (rich in EPA and DHA), Brussels sprouts, perilla oil, soybeans, edamame, and spirulina.

Respect for Fish Day is a call to action for every day of the year. Each fish is an individual, having a subjective experience of life. They are intelligent, emotional, sentient beings who deserve to be protected and defended.

By not eating them, advocating for their rights, and rejecting all animal exploitation, each of us can help end cruelty and promote justice for marine animals, our precious shared planet, and all of its inhabitants.

Learn more about the secret minds and feelings of fishes.