News that the world’s first commercial octopus farm will soon become a reality has been greeted with dismay by scientists and conservationists. They argue that these sensitive and intelligent creatures, believed to be capable of feeling pain and emotion, should never be bred to be traded for food.
Part of Stacey Tonkin’s job is to play with a giant Pacific octopus. When she lifts the tank top to feed the creature known as DJ, short for Davy Jones, he often comes out of his cave to see her and puts his arms on the glass.
That’s if he’s in a good mood. Octopuses live to be four years old, so at one year DJ is the equivalent of a teenager, Stacey says.
“It definitely exhibits what you would expect from a teenager: some days he is really grumpy and sleeps all day. Then other days he’s very playful and active and wants to run around his tank and show off. ”
Stacey is part of a team of five keepers from the Bristol Aquarium, England, and see DJ react differently to each of them.
He says that with her he happily stands still and takes her hand with his tentacles.
The keepers feed the octopus with mussels, prawns, pieces of fish and crab. Sometimes they put the food in a dog toy so that he can play with his tentacles and can practice his hunting skills.
Stacey says her color changes with her mood. “When he’s orange-brown, that’s when he’s active or playful. When he shows spots he is more curious and interested. So he’ll be swimming with an orange and brown color, then he’ll come over and sit next to you and get all mottled just looking at you, which is pretty amazing. ”
He claims that the octopus shows its intelligence through its eyes. “When you look at him, and he looks at you, you can feel that there is something there.”
- 10 incredible facts about octopuses that maybe you did not know
The level of awareness that Stacey witnesses firsthand will be recognized in the legislation of the United Kingdom a through an amendment to the Animal Welfare (Sensitivity) Bill.
The change came after a team of experts examined more than 300 scientific studies and concluded that the Octopuses are “sentient beings” and there is “strong scientific evidence” that they can experience pleasure, excitement and joy, but also pain, anguish and harm.
The authors said they were ” convinced that raising octopuses with high welfare was impossible ”and that the government in the future auroch “might consider banning imported farmed octopus.”
But octopus tentacles They are roasted in pans, rolled onto plates and floated in soups all over the world, from Asia to the Mediterranean and increasingly in the United States. In South Korea the creatures are sometimes eaten alive.
The number of octopuses in the wild is decreasing and prices are rising. It is estimated that each year 350. 000 tons, more than 10 times that of 1950.
In this context, decades ago the race to discover the secret of captive octopus breeding .
It is difficult: the larvae only eat live food and need a carefully controlled environment.
The Spanish multinational Nueva Pescanova (NP) seems to have won the competition against companies from Mexico, Japan and Australia.
It has announced that it will begin to commercialize farmed octopus next summer, to sell it in 2023.
The company was based on an investigation carried out by the Spanish Institute of Oceanography on the habitats Reproductive cough of the common octopus, the Octopus vulgaris .
NP’s commercial farm will be based inland, near the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in the Canary Islands, according to PortSEurope.
reports that the farm will produce 3. 000 tons of octopus per year. The company has been quoted as saying this will help prevent so many wild octopuses from being caught.
Nueva Pescanova has refused to reveal details about the conditions in which the octopuses will be kept, despite of the numerous BBC close-ups.
The size of the tanks, the food they will eat and how they will be killed are secret.
The plans have been denounced by an international group of researchers as “ethically and ecologically unjustified.”
The campaign group Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), has written to the governments of several countries, including Spain, urging them to ban it.
Dr. Elena Lara, director of CIWF research, she’s angry.
“They are amazing animals. They are loners and very intelligent. So putting them in sterile tanks without cognitive stimulation is bad for them”.
She says that anyone who has seen the Oscar-winning documentary 2021, My Octopus Teacher (“ My teacher the octopus ”), he will appreciate it.
Octopuses have large and complex brains. Their intelligence has been proven in numerous scientific experiments.
They have been observed using coconuts and seashells to hide and defend themselves, and have shown that they can quickly learn set tasks.
They have also managed to escape from aquariums and steal from traps set by people who fish .
In addition, they do not have a skeleton to protect them and are very territorial.
Therefore, they could be easily damaged in captivity and , if there were more than one octopus in a tank, experts say they could start to eat each other.
If the octopus farm opens in Spain, it seems that the creatures raised there would receive little protection under European law.
Octopuses and other invertebrate cephalopods are considered sentient beings, but the EU law covering the welfare of farm animals only applies to vertebrates, creatures that have backbones.
Also, according to CIWF, there is currently no scientifically validated method for humane slaughter.
- Aquaculture is the term that is gives to aquatic animal husbandry for food.
- It is the fastest growing food producing sector in the
- The global aquaculture market is growing at around 5% per year and is forecast to be worth almost US $ 300. 000 million for 2027.
- Nails 580 aquatic species are farmed around the world.
- As the human population grows, global aquaculture could provide a vital source of food.
- Fish kept in captivity tend to be more aggressive and contract more disease.
- The EU recently published guidelines recognizing the “lack of good husbandry practices” and “research gaps” in the impact of aquaculture on public and animal health.
Humans and octopuses had a common ancestor ago 560 millions of years, and evolutionary biologist Jakob Vinther from the University of Bristol also has concerns.
“We have an example of an organism that has evolved to have an intelligence that e is extremely comparable to ours , “he explains.
His problem-solving skills, joy, and curiosity are very similar to those of humans, says Dr. Vinther, and yet they are supernatural.
potentially what it would look like if we ever met an intelligent alien from a different planet. ”
Nueva Pescanova assures on its website that it is “firmly committed to aquaculture as a method to reduce the pressure on fisheries and guarantee sustainable, safe, healthy and controlled resources , complementing fishing. ”
But CIWF’s Dr. Lara maintains that NP’s actions are purely commercial and the company’s environmental argument is illogical. “It does not mean that the fishermen will stop fishing [pulpos]”.
She argues that the breeding of octopus could increase increasing pressure on wild fish populations.
Octopuses are carnivores and need to eat two to three times their own weight in food to live.
Currently, about a third of the fish caught worldwide is turned into food for other animals, and approximately half of that amount is destined to aquaculture.
Farmed octopus could be fed with fish products of populations already overfished.
Dr. Lara is concerned that consumers who want to do the right thing may think that eating free-range octopus is better than eating wild-caught octopus.
“It is not more ethical at all: the animal will suffer all its life,” he says.
And a report from 2019 led by New York University Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Jennifer Jacquet argues that banning octopus farming would not leave humans without enough to eat.
It will mean “only that wealthy consumers will pay more for an increasingly scarce wild octopus,” he says.
The entire debate is fraught with cultural complexities.
Industrial agriculture on land has evolved differently around the world.
Pigs, for example, have been shown to be smart. So what is the difference between a factory farm pig that produces a bacon sandwich and a factory farm octopus that will then be cooked Galician style to make the typical dish?
Conservationists argue that the sensitivity of many farm animals was not known when intensive systems were established, and past mistakes should not be repeated.
Because pigs have been domesticated for many years, we have enough knowledge about their needs and we know how to improve their lives, says Dr. Lara.
“The problem with octopuses is that they are completely wild, so we don’t know exactly. what do they need or how we can provide them with a better life. ”
Given all we know about the intelligence of octopuses, and the Since they are not essential for food security, should an intelligent and complex creature begin to be mass-produced for food?
“They are extremely complex beings,” says Dr. Vinther. “I think that as humans we have to respect that if we want to grow or eat them.”
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