Is octopus too clever for the plate?

It’s a charged debate among food lovers. But in the war between octopus defenders and businesses cashing in on a fast-growing market, who will win?

Octopus and bone marrow tacos from KOL Restaurant in London, UK. Picture: Great British Chefs

Oil-crisped tentacles, paper-thin carpaccio and octopus meat plump from slow cooking have been popping up on restaurant menus across the world. And yet just as the gastro star of the octopus has been rising – in the decade to 2019, the global trade doubled in value to more than $3 billion – so too has a cohort intent on protecting the animal.

This is partly due to the Oscar-winning Netflix documentary My Octopus Teacher, which became a surprise hit when it was released two years ago. Following a freediver who develops an intimate bond with a female octopus, it helped to recast these cephalopods in the court of public opinion by showing how intelligent and sensitive they are. Conservationist Jane Goodall called the film “absolutely unbelievable. One of the best movies ever.”

Such has been their Disney-fication that when Spanish seafood company Nueva Pescanova announced plans to open the world’s first octopus farm – to mass-produce octopuses for food – protests followed. The plant is due to open on Gran Canaria in Spain’s Canary Islands in 2023, at a cost of $75 million, but thousands of people have already signed petitions to stop it, from the Canary Islands and as far afield as the UK and US. One protester argued that the move is “a giant step backward with what we now know”.

The anger has left David Chavarrías, managing director of Nueva Pescanova’s Biomarine Centre, bemused. “Octopuses are no different to other species,” he says. He points out that the company has sold fish for more than 60 years, and says the recent anger over the planned farm is an “artificial debate”. Concerns over ­animal welfare have to be “based on scientific ­criteria, not a movie for ­Netflix”, he says.

Octopus is significantly harder to farm than other seafood due in part to the very specific ­conditions required for each stage of development. Competitors based in Japan, the US, ­Mexico and Australia have thus far failed to ­successfully open octopus farms, even though research into how to mass-produce octopuses began in the 1960s in Asia.

Female octopuses lay up to 200,000 eggs, but only a fraction of those make it to adulthood. Larval octopuses hatch into tiny versions of the adult animals. They drift in plankton before swimming to the bottom of the ocean, where the next stage lasts for between two and three months. The juvenile stage, lasting four to five months, is when they grow to full size, before breaching the adult border at about 250 days old. (Octopus vulgaris, or common octopus, is typically eaten at about the one-year-old mark, with a life expectancy of up to twice that.)

Three years ago, Nueva Pescanova finalised its formula to artificially replicate each of these stages; it is now producing “a symbolic amount” of Octopus vulgaris. ­Chavarrías shows me around the company headquarters in Galicia, northern Spain, where these octopuses are being produced ahead of the fully fledged farm opening on Gran Canaria next year. It is a sunny morning and there are no signs of protesters or increased security. The ground floor is home to a museum, open to the public, and beyond it are the labs, which contain the newly hatched creatures. In one room, 2m-high tubes filled with orange and green liquid and neon ­colours bubble with algae, formulated for the ­different stages of larval development. Down the corridors are rows of pools, 7m by 5m, each home to about 10 full-sized octopuses, which waft lazily over one another.

One of the central objections to octopus ­farming hinges on research that suggests keeping the animals in close quarters leads to increased aggression and even cannibalism. “We have seen none of these behaviours,” says Roberto Romero, aquaculture director at Nueva Pescanova, of the five generations that have thus far been bred. If the octopuses want to escape from their shallow pools, they can: “We cannot tell the octopus, ‘Wait, today we have a visitor, please behave.’ ”

Today, the animals in the pools seem docile. Chavarrías pats one on the head. Campaigners insist that captivity triggers aggression and stress in octopuses. But Romero argues, “They keep reproducing, which is the best proof and the best evidence [that captivity is not as injurious to ­Octopus vulgaris].” The team at Nueva Pescanova measures the stress levels of its farmed sea bass and bream to ensure they meet welfare standards. Octopuses do not have cortisol, the so-called “stress hormone”, but they have other biomarkers to indicate distress, which the company says it will also divulge fully in a forthcoming report.

“I had to stop eating them because I was so freaked out … they can escape from SeaWorld by unscrewing drains and going out to sea.”

The farm on Gran Canaria is projected to ­produce 3000 tonnes of farmed octopus annually by its fourth year. “One of the advantages of ­octopus [along with it being low in fat, and high in protein and omega-3] is that when you clean it, you can almost eat everything,” says Romero. The hake market will likely provide the blueprint: the fish was previously sold and exported whole, but is now portioned differently depending on its intended consumers. The company will adjust octopus cuts, too, depending on who is buying it.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation is ­aiming for at least 35 per cent growth in global sustainable aquaculture production by 2030. While aquaculture already accounts for more than half the world’s fish for human consumption – the fastest-growing food-production activity in the world – Europe has not seen growth at the same rate, with aquaculture accounting for about 10 per cent of seafood eaten there.

Sustainable aquaculture should, if done right, reduce pressure on wild fisheries. The UN reports that about a third of wild stocks are overfished; the World Bank has placed the ­figure for fully exploited or overfished stocks at 90 per cent. In successful cases such as salmon, ­Chavarrías claims, aquaculture has allowed the species to recover. Still, ­farming also leaves a significant environmental footprint – a third of the global catch is used to feed other animals, and half of that goes to aquaculture. Relying on vast quantities of wild fish to feed farmed fish can actually increase pressure on natural resources – octopuses, for example, eat mussels, crab, fish and prawns.

That hasn’t stopped startups making inroads into aquaculture. Off the western coast of Panama are floating fish cages, robotics and deep-sea ­sensors. Here the team at Forever Oceans, which has raised about $130 million in funding, is hoping its inaugural harvest will produce almost half a million yellowtail for fillets and sushi. Every week there’s news of vast sums being pumped into other aquaculture ventures.

A 2004 study noted that Octopus vulgaris was a prime candidate for aquaculture, due to “easy adaptation to captivity conditions, high growth rate, acceptance of low-value natural foods, high reproductive rate and high market price”. Businesses clearly agree – but those against octopus farming are still disturbed by the prospect. And one key question looms: how will the creatures die?

Spanish seafood company Nueva Pescanova has announced plans to open the world’s first octopus farm.

Nueva Pescanova has not confirmed what method it will use. “We don’t want to make it ­public until we have all the scientific evidence to prove that this is the perfect method,” says Romero. Whatever the choice, it will likely involve rendering the animals unconscious first, “so they will feel nothing when they are slaughtered”.

In the UK, the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act, designed to protect “feeling” animals, was expanded last year to include octopuses, along with crabs and lobsters, due to the complexities of their central nervous systems. Prompted by research from Dr Jonathan Birch, principal ­investigator on the Foundations of Animal ­Sentience project at the London School of ­Economics, the amendment was designed to ensure animal ­welfare is “well considered in future decision-­making”. “The science is now clear that decapods and cephalopods can feel pain and therefore it is only right they are covered by this vital piece of legislation,” environment minister Zac Goldsmith said at the time.

Gwyneth Paltrow, actress and founder of lifestyle brand Goop, has stopped eating octopus. Picture: Getty Images

But in the war between octopus defenders and businesses cashing in on a fast-growing market, who will win?

Actor Gwyneth Paltrow, for one, stopped ­eating octopus some years ago, arguing that these animals are “too smart to be food”. In an online conversation with co-workers she is reported to have said, “I had to stop eating them because I was so freaked out … they can escape from SeaWorld by unscrewing drains and going out to sea.”

Romero is less convinced, arguing that ­octopuses are a “very important species for our cultural gastronomy” in Spain – certainly, you’d be hard-pressed to find a restaurant in Galicia ­without Pulpo a la Gallega (a dish of octopus with potatoes) on the menu. He believes they are being “targeted” now simply because they are the newest animal to be farmed. “[Many of the protesters] have never eaten octopus, and they have seen this movie from Netflix. And now they say, ‘Oh, don’t eat octopus because it’s a very cute animal’.”

In top restaurants, artistically plated tentacles aren’t going anywhere for now, much to the delight of Romero. “We need to make the most of this opportunity,” he says. “Once we have published all our arguments, there will be nothing to say … we have nothing to hide.”