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OUR GLOBAL IMPACT

Our goal is to improve the lives of as many fish as possible. Below we estimate how many fish and shrimp we have already helped.

Areas of Impact

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India:

1,740,000 fishes

1,400,000 shrimps

Philippines:

10,000 fishes

Portugal:

56,000 fishes

Note: In India, we primarily help fish through the Alliance for Responsible Aquaculture.

In Portugal, we worked with one producer to improve welfare.

In the Philippines, we helped fish through our Farmer Engagement Project.

Fish Potentially Helped

This includes all the fish we have helped already.

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1.806M

Fish potentially helped through welfare improvements

Last updated: March 14, 2024

~1 fish potentially helped per 1 dollar 

Fish

How we define fish potentially helped

In “fish potentially helped,” we include all the fish living in a fish farm where 1) we have implemented a welfare improvement that we believe otherwise would not have been implemented, and 2) we feel ≥80% confident that the welfare improvement made a positive impact on the fish. To get the number of fish helped per dollar, we divide the sum of fish living in a farm with welfare improvements by the total expenses we have had as a charity so far.

 

Currently, most of the number of fish we help results from working with farmers through the Alliance for Responsible Aquaculture. Specifically, they live on farms where we believe we have been responsible for stocking density and/or water quality improvements. Apart from that, we work with international farmers to implement targeted welfare improvements. 

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Examples of fish potentially helped:

  • A farmer in India planned to stock 3,500 fish per acre. After working with us, he realized the benefits of stocking at most 3,000 fish per acre. Stocking fewer fish gives the fish in the farm more space, which in turn helps curb disease outbreaks and poor water quality. Thus, the fish in this farm live better lives.

  • In another farm in India, we detected dissolved oxygen levels lower than specified in the ARA commitment. We advised the farmer to remove debris at his farm and turn on his aerators. The follow-up measurements showed a significant increase in dissolved oxygen, giving the fish in his farm better lives.

  • We visited a farm in Portugal and conducted a welfare assessment of their various production steps. Among other things, we suggested more welfare-friendly handling and capture to decrease injuries, and the farmer reduced stocking densities to give fish more space. 

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You can find details about the individual instances in which we helped fish on our Total Impact sheet. The explanations on there are written by our ground staff who requested the respective welfare improvements from farmers.

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Also see Limitations of our numbers below.

Shrimp Potentially Helped

Note: We are much less certain about the number of shrimp helped and the impact our interventions have on shrimps' lives. 

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1.40M

Shrimp potentially helped through welfare improvements

Last updated: March 14, 2024

~0.85 shrimp potentially helped per 1 dollar 
~85 shrimp potentially helped per 100 dollars

Shrimp

How we define shrimp potentially helped

In “shrimp potentially helped,” we include all the shrimp living in a farm where we have implemented a welfare improvement that we believe otherwise would not have been implemented. To get the number of shrimp helped per dollar, we divide the sum of shrimp living in a farm with welfare improvements by the total expenses we have had as a charity so far.

 

Currently, most of the number of shrimp we help results from working with farmers through the Alliance for Responsible Aquaculture. Specifically, they live on farms where we believe we have been responsible for stocking density and/or water quality improvements targeting the fish in the farm. As such, the impact we have on shrimp is indirect through targeting fish.

Limitations

Limitations of our numbers​

1.

We don’t (currently) assess magnitude. The numbers of fish potentially helped do not consider the degree to which they were helped.​ While our welfare improvements theoretically should improve fish welfare, given the on-the-ground implementation difficulties and our current lack of a rigorous impact analysis, we are still significantly uncertain about the magnitude of our per-fish impact. Thus, it is unfortunately possible that our improvements are currently only having a trivial impact. In part address this uncertainty, we are planning to develop a welfare assessment protocol in 2024. In the long-run, we aspire that FWI (as well as all animal welfare organizations) move towards a system like that of the Welfare Footprint Project.

2.

We generalize. It is possible that some fish counted may not have suffered in the absence of our intervention. For example, water quality is dynamic depending on where fish are in the farm. Thus, we do not know with certainty that all individuals would have suffered under water quality levels we deem inadequate.​

3.

We only count the fish we know of. It is common for there to be fish within a farm that have not been intentionally stocked by the farmer, such as invasive fish who enter the system through in-flow or fish that were not successfully removed in previous harvests. We expect that in almost all cases our improvements will also positively improve these fishes’ lives. However, we do not currently have a way to account for our impact on these individuals, so they are excluded.​

4.

We focus primarily on fish, not shrimp. We work with farmers farming fish or shrimp, or both in polyculture. Thus, our welfare improvements affect both fish and shrimp. We see the fish lives we improve as our primary area of impact because our interventions are targeting fish species. We are even less certain of the impact we have on shrimp, even though farmers stock a lot more shrimp in each farm. â€‹

5.

We have limited shrimp welfare knowledge. We know much less about shrimp welfare. The focus of our improvements and measurements has been on fish. As such, we are less confident that shrimp have been significantly positively affected by our interventions than we are for fish. However, we are relatively confident that the improvements we make that target fish welfare can benefit shrimp, mainly because improving water quality parameters like dissolved oxygen, temperature, and pH is essential for shrimp welfare.

Thank you for making this impact possible.

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