Octopuses have amazing memories. They play and take coconut shells with them as a precaution to protect their soft, invertebrate bodies in an emergency. There are many indications that they are conscious of themselves and that they recognize other living beings – including humans – as individuals and find them sympathetic or not.
For these and many other reasons, it is ethically extremely questionable to breed octopus in aquaculture in order to satisfy the human hunger for “Pulpo al la Gallega” and countless other octopus dishes. Unfortunately, this is exactly what is planned: An octopus farm is to be built on the Canary Island of Gran Canariathat could produce 3000 tons per year as early as 2023. Apparently the Spanish company Nueva Pescanova succeeded in reproducing octopuses in captivity. Up until now this was hardly possible, the breeding of the animals is extremely difficult – if only because the larvae only eat live food.
The squid are aware that they are sitting in a tank
Animal rights activists are rightly attacking the project. From everything that is known about octopuses, it is absolutely impossible to keep these animals in aquaculture even remotely appropriate to their species. It starts with the fact that they are loners and there should be no place in such a company to keep every animal for themselves. It is not known how to kill the intelligent octopuses in such a way that they suffer as little as possible. And unlike most fish, who are probably unaware that they are swimming in an aquarium rather than the ocean, octopuses probably know they are in a tank. And that there are other living beings – people – outside the tank.
All of this outweighs the proponents’ argument that the Canary Islands farm will help reduce the number of wild octopuses being caught. It is estimated that fishermen are currently pulling around 350,000 tonnes from the sea each year. It is doubtful that they actually catch less just because there are additional aquaculture animals on the market.
In addition, the octopuses would be protected by law much less than pigs, for example, which are also intelligent and are still bred in factory farming. Most of the laws governing the keeping of farm animals deal exclusively with vertebrate animals. However, octopuses do not have a spine – they have a brain that is not only located in the head, but also in the whole body.