I never could understand how people gut a fish and say "don't worry, it can't feel it."
First of all, how could the fish not feel it?!
Second, how the hell would they know???

Perhaps it's because, unlike fish, many people don't have feelings

I had 2 fish in my living room that died from a contaminated tank my daughter ignored. I was upset and cried.

Not sure,
But I've also noticed that a lot of people don't consider fish to be meat.
Not sure how they figure that either, but maybe it's linked to not feeling sorry for them.

Clearly, you haven't met my daughter.

I do...

I lost my mustard tang a few weeks ago (I have a marine tank). He was 23 years old and had come to understand my every move.

We had a set of signals. I would hold up my index finger 3 feet from the tank and, if he was hungry, he would turn tight circles.If he wasn't hungry he wouldn't. When I showed him the food tub (or handful of snacks) he would go to the top front left corner of the tank which is where I fed him. He would take food from my hand. I tried him on all sorts of things and he had definite tastes. It seems weird but he liked chocolate cake.

I once told a friend about this and showed her the signals and told her what the fish's responses would be. He understood but turned one cicle, stopped and stared, turned another circle, stopped and stared and so on.

My friend said that she had never before had a conversation with a fish and that, although he was hungry, he made it clear that he neither trusted nor liked her.

He also had a good and long memory when I would replace rocks in the tank with ones that had been taken out to 'de-algae'. He tried to back into a 'cave' in tufarock that he used to inhabit when he was little. He looked a bit miffed that he could no longer get in it.

Who says that compassionate, kind people don't feel bad? Some of us do.
Our friends have faces....

What fish? I don't have a personal relationship with many of them.

Probably because it wasn't a pet and you are hungry.

Haha I think they do sometimes!

I do. Fish feel pain. Shopping in rural Indonesian food markets 10-years ago my local hosts were buying the evening's dinner. Refrigerators were very rare. The big red carp were swimming around in a huge vat of water and the buyer would say how many and someone would scoop them out. Instead of killing them, they dropped them into black plastic bags (no water) and tied them off. It took the fish an hour to stop writhing and by then we were about home. I asked why not kill them? "Because we want them fresh and the heat and black bags in the sun just hasten decomposition." I didn't enjoy my meal at all and stopped eating 95% of animal flesh on return to the US. They don't have to be cute to feel pain.

I feel bad. When my bettas reach the end of their lifespan, I'll definitely be bawling.

A quote from Paul McCartney..." what has eyes, one does not eat"and yes he is a vegetarian. I like it. However I do eat fish, eggs and chicken. No pork and very little red meat for the past 2 years. I'm eating more miso/tofu dishes now.

If I am intending to eat a fish (there are several delicious freshwater species and practically all sea fish) then I kill it immediately using a proper 'priest'. This is a wooden truncheon with lead inside it. Traditionally you hit the fish on the head three times but the first blow usually kills, or at least stuns, it.

The name derives from the fact that it is used to administer the 'last rites'.

I am quite prepared to accept that fish feel pain, which could be a problem as I am an angler.

However, I have been hooked more than once. Once, while fly-fishing, I stupidly cast in a blustery wind without wearing glasses. I felt a knock between (thankfully) my eyes and thought I had been hit by a stone. Reeling in the line the leader could be seen arcing up to my face. It was only then that I realised I had been hooked (and it is a difficult job to remove a barbed hook from human skin.

I have been hooked on a few more occasions and, after the initial prick, it doesn't hurt - the hooks are very fine.

So it is probably the same for a hooked fish.

What bothers the fish, though, is that it is caught and is being pulled where it doesn't want to go.

I was told many years ago that, in some backwaters of the river Thames, there were large bream who would fight for a couple of seconds and then go limp and allow themselves to be dragged to the landing net, taken out of the water, lie still while being unhooked and stay quiet for their time in the keep net (used to retain fish during a contest).

The theory was that these fish got fat by hoovering up groundbait and regarded being occasionally caught as a reasonable trade-off.

I do. My daughter was sad. She's 9.

I do.

I feel sorry that you feel that way...... Hope that counts?

How do you know?

It´s probably the same reason why most people don´t feel sorry when a land creature dies...?

Fish have never been warm and cuddly to me. They taste good but I have no emotional connection to them.

It's all about how humans can relate. Humans make it about themselves and how they feel. Fish don't have the same characteristics of the animals that we relate to the most. You can't see a fish's emotions. I won't even go to the other conversations we've had (in general) on the moral high ground with stuff like this. It's kind of like how it's so easy for people to kill bugs like ants and roaches.

We haven't bonded with them maybe?