This article was featured in Eurofish Magazine 6 2025.
Wild-capture fisheries feed hundreds of millions of people and sustain coastal economies across Europe. Yet the welfare of the fish we catch has only recently begun to receive the attention it deserves.
Improving welfare during capture, handling, and slaughter is not merely an ethical obligation, argues Michelle Boonstra, the manager of the Catch Welfare Platform, in this interview. It can also strengthen stock sustainability (through higher survival of released fish), enhance product quality and shelf-life, and support the sector’s long-term economic resilience. In short, she says, catch welfare is part of future-proofing European fisheries.
The Catch Welfare Platform (CWP) is an industry–science initiative dedicated to welfare-conscious fishing. The platform convenes fishers, processors, retailers, technologists, and researchers to develop realistic best practices and to accelerate adoption at sea. Its goals are to give industry a voice, share knowledge, and create profitable solutions.
From niche topic to standard practice
Welfare needs to become as routine a part of fisheries conversations as sustainability is today, emphasises
Ms Boonstra. The platform is a hub where people meet and collaborate to create solutions, starting with risk assessments to identify the main welfare hazards in each fishery, then translating those findings into best practice and, where needed, technical innovation. CWP frames its work in the One Welfare concept—recognising the interdependence of animal welfare, human wellbeing (including crew safety), and environmental stewardship. At the same time, Ms Boonstra acknowledges the constraints that exist when crews juggle time pressure, safety, weather, and profitability. Any welfare improvement must “fit daily practice,” she notes, acknowledging trade-offs, and avoiding measures that create new risks for people while solving problems for fish.
The scientific case for catch welfare has accelerated. Catch Welfare Platform highlights that minimising injury and stress during capture and handling can reduce bycatch mortality, increase survival of released animals, and improve meat quality—tangible benefits that link ethics to economics. Moreover, CWP observes that more supermarkets are now setting requirements touching on seafood welfare, while public interest continues to rise—a sign that better welfare can become a route to product differentiation, not just a cost.
Low-cost improvements that can be made today
Catch welfare is not only about complex machinery. Many meaningful gains are within easier reach on working decks. For example,
- Reduce unwanted catch by using selective fishing gears. This limits the stress and injury to unwanted and undersized fish/animals by allowing them to escape before they are brought to the surface to be discarded.
- Reduce air and light exposure. Handling more fish in water, rather than in air, cuts stress and physical damage and can lift quality.
- Fix the “hard edges.” Removing sharp bends and high drops in pump systems and chutes reduces physical trauma and injury, can lower discard mortality, and improve catch quality.
Ms Boonstra characterises these as the “low-hanging fruit” in some fisheries: practical changes that are relatively cheap, quick to implement compared to for example advanced stunners, and that make immediate sense to crews and skippers because they reduce damage and raise product value.
Vitality assessment could be a useful indicator
Objective, animal-based indicators are essential for monitoring progress. One of the most practical tools is vitality assessment —a rapid evaluation of fish condition during fishing operations. Recent Norwegian research links larger catches and longer crowding to poorer vitality in Atlantic mackerel during purse seining and pumping operations. CWP stresses that vitality methods are still being developed and will need to be species- and context-specific in the near term. Over time, some metrics may prove general enough for broader standardisation While science will necessarily lead this innovation, it will be heavily dependent on collaboration with fishers to develop of the protocols.
Among the technical solutions in development of interest are codends with reduced water flow (FloMo/Tiaki). Inspired by New Zealand’s Precision Seafood Harvesting programme, membrane-lined codends reduce water flow around the catch, reducing crowding and physical contact with the net and so improving conditions during towing and hauling. Within a Dutch project the FloMo was tested on different demersal fisheries, aiming to improve selectivity, welfare and thus discard survival.
Another technology is integrated electrical stun-and-kill systems that stun fish and swiftly kill before recovery. These can not only reduce stress in the catch but can remove heavy manual tasks for the fishers. However, success depends on both the hardware and the human element—crews not only need to know how to operate equipment, but also why it matters, so procedures are done correctly even under heavy workloads.
The win-win argument for catch welfare
European law recognises animals as sentient beings and requires that fisheries policy pay full regard to animal welfare (Article 13 TFEU). Yet there are no explicit EU-level provisions dedicated to the welfare of wild-caught fish during capture and on-board handling, and the principal slaughter regulation (1099/2009) does not set detailed operational standards for wild fish at sea. This creates a policy gap that the sector and regulators are now beginning to address.
Ms Boonstra cautions against rushing regulation without a solid evidence base, because poorly designed rules risk being counter-productive at sea and unfair in practice. Better, she argues, is to proceed step by step, building consensus around validated methods and creating a level playing field—especially when costly equipment such as stunners is involved. There are encouraging signs of institutional movement. In January 2024, the European Commission designated the fourth EU Reference Centre for Animal Welfare, this one focused on aquatic animals, that is developing animal-based indicators and supporting enforcement. While its initial focus is aquaculture, its work on indicators, training, and knowledge transfer is also of relevance to capture fisheries. In addition, the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) is planning to establish a working group in 2026 to coordinate science and advice on aquatic animal welfare in commercial and recreational fisheries, as well as aquaculture.
Retailers not yet ready to offer premiums for greater -welfare
Retailers are increasingly active on seafood welfare policies including as part of CWP, but Ms Boonstra’s experience reflects that buyers will offer market access but that consistent price premiums are harder to secure. That makes external funding and risk-sharing important during the transition—and it underscores the value of certification add-ons or indicator frameworks that help the market recognise better practice. Here, CWP’s approach is two-pronged. First, it demonstrates that better welfare and product quality often go hand-in-hand (for example, fewer damaged fish, higher auction grades, and less waste). Second, it helps buyers understand what “good” looks like in different fisheries, so procurement standards are both auditable, fair and science based.
Towards practical, auditable criteria
Because capture fisheries are diverse, CWP starts with risk assessment at the level of species and gear. For a pelagic purse seine, hazards may cluster around the crowding and pumping phases, including the use of RSW tanks; for crustaceans sold live, entirely different points in the chain could matter more. From this analysis, best practices can be codified, and—where feasible—translated into criteria that buyers can recognise and auditors can verify. Stunning and killing methods will be central where applicable, but other criteria (e.g., maximum crowding duration, limits on drop heights, or in-water handling standards) will vary by fishery.
When pumping fish on board, reducing sharp bends and high drops in the system decreases
the risk of physical trauma and injury and leads thus to better quality.
Adoption at scale hinges on different factors. Crews are more likely to adapt when they see that welfare-driven adjustments improve product quality and maybe even their own working conditions. Ms Boonstra cites trials where better capture systems sharply reduced the share of fish falling into low-quality categories. Another factor refers to the realities of life on board. Solutions must respect deck space, crew safety, and working load. Finally, acknowledgement that early adopters face real costs is needed. Grants and innovation funding help, but level playing fields—through validated standards, procurement requirements, or regulation once the science is settled—will ultimately be needed to encourage investment. These and related issues were discussed at the third Catch Welfare Platform Conference where awards and an idea challenge highlighted good practice, recognised innovation, and matched ideas with partners. The event took place on 19–20 November 2025 in IJmuiden, with a dedicated crustacean welfare workshop the following day.
If welfare can become as unremarkable—and as fundamental—as sustainability in fisheries, countries within Europe and without will have taken a decisive step toward a seafood system that is ethically sound, science-based, and commercially feasible. That is precisely the future the Catch Welfare Platform is organising to deliver.
