Do fish feel pain?

Yes they do. This site presents facts from scientific research to show that fish feel pain, and expose the cruelty involved in angling.

One of the other reasons for the popularity of fishing is that the mute animals have a silent agony. To reassure one's conscience, it is said that they are cold-blooded and don't feel pain.
- Jacques Cousteau

Angling, the cruelest, the coldest, and the stupidest of pretended sports. No angler can be a good man.
- Lord Byron

In hunting and fishing, the fault is in the men delighting in the torments and cruel deaths of beasts and tearing them without compassion from their whelps and their young ones.
- Plutarch

Angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
- Samuel Johnson

Who hears the fishes when they cry?
- Henry David Thoreau

Vivisection
Unhooked is opposed to vivisection. However, a great deal of the evidence presented in this site has been gathered from this quarter. It vital is that we use the results of what has been done, so that the victims may potentially help millions of other fish, so that they have not suffered in vain.

Scientific papers
Links have been made to scientific papers where they are publicly available. Where this is not possible, links have been made to abstracts (summaries). Papers can be bought from the publishers, or obtained through a library.