This week, I'm sharing a small side project I've been working on: an interactive experience that I hope will change how you think about the animals we eat from the sea.
Between 1.1 and 2.2 trillion fish and aquatic animals are killed for human consumption every year. That number is so large it becomes meaningless. Our brains aren't built to comprehend a trillion of anything. But here's what we can comprehend: a single life. A single death. What it feels like to be trapped in a net with nowhere to go. What it means to suffocate slowly over fifty-five minutes, fully conscious. What it's like to be born in a concrete tank and never know anything else.
"A Trillion Ways to Die" is an interactive tool that lets you experience four different lives - an anchoveta caught off the coast of Peru, a whiteleg shrimp raised in intensive aquaculture, an Atlantic salmon confined to a sea cage, and a blue mussel whose capacity for suffering we still don't understand. You'll make choices. Some will feel meaningful. Most won't matter at all. Just like for the animals themselves.
Every detail in these stories comes from peer-reviewed research on commercial fishing and aquaculture practices. The inspiration and data comes from https://fishcount.org.uk/ - an incredibly repository of data on the lives lost due to our unnecessary obsession with consuming fish and other marine animals.
Try it out here: https://jacobwarn.com/a-trillion-ways-to-die/
