Solving Fish Welfare: FWI's Bold 2025 Research Agenda
As previously discussed, Fish Welfare Initiative (FWI) invests heavily in research and development to identify novel interventions for improving the lives of farmed fishes. Below, today on April 1, we are proud to share our 2025 research agenda, developed through vigorous internal debate, external consultation, and extremely intricate cost-effective analyses.
1. Direct Cash Transfers to Fishes
Rationale: Inspired by the proven success of human-focused cash transfer programs, we propose piloting direct financial aid for fishes. While logistical challenges exist (e.g., lack of bank accounts), we believe this intervention could be cost-effective in terms of increased agency.
​
Research questions:
-
What goods or services would carps prioritize if given unrestricted cash transfers?
-
Is there evidence of increased dependence on assistance among beneficiary populations (e.g., goldfishes who stop foraging)?
​
​
2. Fish-Focused Moral Weights Assessment
Rationale: Most existing moral weight studies ask humans how many fishes equal one human. However, asking a member of one species to judge how much another species should be valued in comparison may, in fact, be a biased question. In the spirit of epistemic humility, FWI will conduct the first known study to reverse this question—asking fishes how many humans they are worth.
​
Research questions:
-
How many humans would a salmon kill to save one salmon?
-
If a carp were stranded on a desert island with just one human, would they eat the human?
-
Are fishes generally more forgiving of vegans, or do they resent the smugness?
​
​
3. Disruption Strategies for Comparative Welfare Organization
Rationale: Given the limited funding pool for aquatic animal welfare, improving relative organizational visibility may indirectly improve FWI's overall impact. This study will thus explore subtle and plausibly deniable methods of subverting our arch-rival organization, Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP), in order to maximize our share of the donor pool.
​
Research questions:
-
Would they notice if we replaced their office coffee with ethically harvested pond scum?
-
Can FWI reliably seed shrimp-related disinformation memes without backlash?
-
How many jokes about SWP does FWI need to make before receiving a response?
​​
4. Staff Wellbeing Interventions for Enhanced Organizational Impact
Rationale: Recent Effective Altruist literature suggests that by improving the wellbeing and time-efficiency of nonprofit staff, organizations can boost their expected impact by 0.05%. In this spirit, FWI will be piloting a suite of luxury staff perks, including personal chefs, ergonomic floatation tanks, and artisanal kelp lattes.
​
Research questions:
-
What is the marginal fish helped per minute of time freed up by staff never having to cook, clean, or otherwise engage in domestic labor again again?
-
Are midday shiatsu massages correlated with higher effectiveness?
-
How many fishes must a staff claim to benefit in order to justify business-class travel?
​​
5. Quantifying Acceptable Levels of Impact Inflation Among Donors
Rationale: It has recently come to FWI's attention that organizations sometimes present their impact in a slightly. . . optimized light. This is, of course, done solely in service of the greater good (i.e., the fishes), and not because it makes fundraising easier. In cases where exaggerating our impact leads to increased donations (and thus, more fishes helped), FWI seeks to understand what level of overstatement donors consider "technically fine".
​
Research questions:
-
If FWI partners with a group that convinces a retailer to introduce better welfare practices, but then does none of the work, can we still claim credit?
-
If we pair “with a wide confidence interval” and "conservative estimates" with a made-up number, can we legally say anything?
-
​Can we retroactively take credit for Finding Nemo?​
​
​
We’re eager to solicit public input on this exciting new direction for our work.
Critical comments may be submitted here.
Compliments, praise, and large recurring donations may be shared here.​​​
For the first time, aquaculture—the world’s fastest-growing food industry—has surpassed wild capture as humanity's main source of fishes.
As aquaculture grows, fish welfare must grow, too.
Causes of Suffering
While welfare issues vary in type and severity from farm to farm, the broad causes of suffering farmed fishes face include:
Overcrowding
Poor water quality
Ineffective and absent pre-slaughter stunning
Diseases and parasites
Inability to express their natural behaviors
Given salmons’ natural migratory and predatory drives, keeping these animals in sea cages may be fundamentally unsuitable for their welfare. As seen above, salmons may exhibit behaviors such as leaping from the water as they try to remove parasitic sea lice from their bodies. Learn more. Ed Shephard / We Animals
Our Impact
We work to improve the lives of farmed fishes in two main ways:
Keep Exploring
Fish Sentience
Do Fish Feel Pain? by Victoria Braithwaite
What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins by Jonathan Balcombe
Recent Blog Posts
Yes, this is a joke. Happy April 1st!