If fish could scream, would we treat them so cruelly?

Many people don’t fully grasp that fish need oxygen to breathe. While gills allow them to extract this oxygen through water, they can’t inherently “breathe underwater”; in enclosed spaces, they run out of oxygen just as we do. Fish trapped in small plastic bags are slowly and painfully suffocating, their lives traded for pennies and discarded down the drain days later. Similarly, fish caught in nets are jerked from their homes and thrust into an environment where they can no longer breathe, their gills collapsing without buoyancy of water supporting them. In the same position, any one of us would scream.

These pieces aren’t meant to be a criticism of animal cruelty. We all know that cruelty is wrong, and rarely has that stopped us from enacting it. Rather, these pieces are an exploration of cruelty, and how our response to it shifts when we recognize ourselves in its victims. Do you feel more sorry for these fish, now that they look more like you? Is it uncomfortable to look at them? Does their pain feel more real, somehow, even though no part of their situation is unusual?

We are used to seeing fish dying slow and painful deaths. By depicting them with human mouths twisted into agonized screams, I hope to call out the inherent self-centeredness of empathy. We all express our own pain differently. Some of us break down, others lash out, others bury and ignore their pain entirely. But pain is pain regardless of expression, and it should not need to conform to a certain look in order to be recognized as such. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with our self-centered nature because it is unavoidable, but in reconciling with this part of ourselves, we gain a more nuanced understanding of pain, empathy, and cruelty. I urge you to look again at fish in the pet store, fish gifted as carnival prizes, and wonder: would you still find them here if they could scream?