Ruminations: Harvesting The Seas

Octopuses are highly intelligent, and have been observed trying to escape from aquariums Gabrielle Yap / EyeEm

"[The octopus farm] will inflict unnecessary suffering on these intelligent, sentient and fascinating creatures, which need to explore and engage with the environment as part of their natural behaviour."
"[Octopuses' diets require large quantities of animal protein to sustain], contributing to overfishing at a time when fish stocks are already under immense pressure."
Elena Lara, Compassion in World Farming

"Were calling on the EU to include a ban on octopus farming before it ever sees the light of day, in order to avoid plunging more sentient beings into a living hell."
Reineke Hameleers, CEO, Eurogroup for Animals

"To kill them with ice would be a slow death … it would be very cruel and should not be allowed."
"They are] as intelligent as cats. [A more humane way would be to kill them as many fishermen do, by clubbing them over the head]."
Prof. Peter Tse, cognitive neuroscientist, Dartmouth University

"[High-welfare octopus farming is] impossible [killing in ice slurry] would not be an acceptable method of killing in a lab."
"Large numbers of octopuses should never be kept together in close proximity. Doing this leads to stress, conflict and high mortality … A figure of 10-15% mortality should not be acceptable for any kind of farming."
Jonathan Birch, associate professor, London School of Economics

Wrangel

A Spanish seafood company, Nueva Pescanova, is preparing to establish the world's first octopus farm to be built in the Canary Islands. Its plan to harvest the animals by freezing them to death has been universally condemned as cruel. Plans by the company include the production of roughly a million octopuses for human consumption annually. According to Nueva Pescanova, the octopuses would be maintained in tanks shared with others under constant light. In the animals' natural environment they are solitary, preferring a dark ambience.

Plans are to kill the octopuses by placing them in water at a temperature of -3C -- already in use commercially in the slaughter of fish. Studies on this methodoligy of harvest show that it results in a slow, stressful death. The "ice slurry" method, according to the World Organization for Animal Health, "results in poor fish welfare". The technique should be banned unless fish are first stunned, argues the Aquaculture Stewardship Council.

The global octopus trade is now estimated to be worth more than £2.2bn Gerardo G. Mourín - ggmourin@gmail.com

According to animal rights groups responding to the planned octopus farm, it is to be condemned since confining octopuses in barren underwater tanks will cause the animals suffering. It also risks stress-induced reactions of aggression, territorialism and cannibalism; conditions forced upon the animals by corrupting their living arrangements. Experimental trials to farm octopuses indicate the mortality rate in these systems would end up around 20 percent.

The General Directorate of Fishing of the Canary Islands must come to a decision whether to approve the new facility which is planned to be comprised of around a thousand tanks located in the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Animal rights groups are calling on the Authority to refrain from issuing a license for the farm. The European Union has been asked to ban such facilities.\

In 2019, Nueva Pescanova made an announcement to the effect that it had achieved a breakthrough in research, that it could be possible to farm and breed octopuses in communal tanks. Their plan is to supply international markets, including the United States and Japan.