Citation
Patil, Shrilaxmi; Unerman, Matthew; and Emam, Wasseem (2026) Beyond better conditions: Seaweed farming and the number of sentient animals in aquaculture. Animal Sentience 36(11)
Commentary Type
Open Commentary
Thread
Ronald G. Oldfield and Patrick Bonano, Psychological and social well-being of bony fishes in zoos and aquariums
Abstract
Oldfield & Bonano (2024) (O&B) document how far fish welfare research lags behind welfare research in other animals. We share O&B’s feelings-based concept of welfare and agree that aquaculture seeded this field; but research volume has not scaled with animal numbers: Welfare attention per farmed fish or decapod remains negligible. Along the lines of preceding commentaries (Maia 2024, Mather 2024), we treat farmed aquatic animals as individuals rather than tonnage. We then raise a point so far absent from the commentary on O&B so far: reducing the number of sentient animals entering intensive systems. Coastal seaweed farming, which cultivates non-sentient primary producer organisms, is the marine analogue of the plant-based shift on land – and it is credible economically.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
DOI
10.51291/2377-7478.1946
Included in
Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, Food Science Commons, Marine Biology Commons, Plant Sciences Commons, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology Commons