The myth of the good savage strikes again. Animal cruelty is a such elastic term that I'm wondering why they don't use it still to make condoms.
Predators trying to eat you alive all the time, cannibalism, diseases making tunnels in your muscle, famine, acid water, contamination, environmental changes, noise levels that could make you crazy. If you have luck you reproduce once and then die of exhaustion and skin infections. If not, a bear eats you alive just when you were thinking in losing your virginity at 40 Yo, finally. Or a fishermen puts a hook in your eye, or in the mouth just for fun, pulls you out of the water and lets you suffocate slowly. Or you bang your head against a concrete wall. This is the normal journey of a wild salmon.
And this is NOT animal cruelty. This does not make you sad.
If you are on a crusade to remove animal cruelty, look at all this people living in Tokyo. They are packed like sardines in a can. But humans are gregarious animals, so it does not matter!. (They are happy!). Salmons on the other way are gregarious animals, so it is a big problem!. (They are sad!. They talk to me complaining!)
Is a problem, simply because it does not fit into our ideological vision of the world. An infantile paradise where salmons are nice little people with tiny hats that party with Pepa pig. They love bananas, football and to climb trees. (They must love it, because we do).
The idea that salmons are predatory fishes and would not mind to eat their siblings if they can catch them... don't like that. Protect me from the real world, pikachu.