Most people don’t realize that fish feel pain.  They have very sensitive nerve endings around their mouths.  Think how it must feel to have a hook slice through your mouth and then you get hauled up by that hook and kept out of water where you slowly suffocate.  Fish often get hooked in their eyes and it is very hard for them to get unhooked.  Sometimes fishermen catch them and release them after they are badly hurt. This is very cruel.

     If someone asks you to go fishing, tell them that fishes have feelings and deserve to live just like anyone else.

     Organize litter patrols along beaches, streams and lakes to clean up fishing line and other dangerous litter left by people who fish. Be very careful though to watch out for hooks – they hurt!  Put up signs reading "Please no not leave fishing line here."

If your school carnival or fair has contests that give free goldfishes as prizes, organize a group of students to complain to the principal. Explain that a frightened, lonely goldfish is no prize and suggest plush animal toys or other prizes instead.

     Don’t buy tropical fishes or other animals.  Fishes belong in open waters, so they must be very frustrated and bored when kept in bowls and tanks.  If we stop buying fishes, people will stop catching them and selling them.