Octopus, octopus and even more octopus: “Instead of spider crabs, edible crabs or lobsters, we’ve only been catching octopus since June,” says Olivier Le Gurun, fisherman in the port of Quiberon, a peninsula on the southern tip of Brittany. “The octopuses climb into our basket pots and eat up our actual prey. Some are even smart enough to break out in time before we can heave them on board.”
The stories that Breton fishermen are bringing back from the sea these days could also come from a novel by Frank Schätzing. Every day they pull dozens of tons of octopus from the ocean floor up onto their cutters. A natural spectacle of the slippery kind. “Nobody has ever seen anything like this before,” says Morgane Ramonet from the Finistère Department’s Fisheries Committee. “Last year just 150 tons of octopus were caught on the French Atlantic coast. By the end of November this year it was over 2000 tons.”
A handful of ports on the short stretch of coast between Guilvinec and Quiberon are hardest hit. Here the catch volumes are sometimes fifteen times as high as in the previous year. Many fishermen have now changed their saddles and only fish for cephalopods.
“When the water retreats at low tide and accumulates in the natural basin between the rocks, we can watch the octopus hunt at dusk,” says the marine biologist Guillaume Eveillard, who works in La Rochelle to the south. “We only knew stories like this from our grandparents.”
Like many other researchers, Eveillard is wondering where the octopuses come from so suddenly. Since the freezing winter of 1962-63, the cold-sensitive animals on the Atlantic coast have long been thought to have disappeared. The last mild winters could have been a factor for the rapid increase. “Octopuses only live two years. And if it’s warm enough, they can grow extremely quickly in this short time. In the course of their two years of life, they can easily reach an average weight of three kilograms and more,” says Eveillard. Lobsters or sea bass would need up to ten years for this. Given these growth rates, one or two mild winters could be enough to cause populations to explode.
The insatiable predators mainly eat scallops, lobsters and lobsters
However, there were warm winters even before 2020. “At this point in time, we cannot speak of an unequivocal consequence of climate change,” says Laure Bonnaud-Ponticelli, Parisian marine biologist and expert on cephalopods. “Too many different factors act together, including flow patterns, for example.”
Once the female octopuses are large enough and reach sexual maturity, they will lay between 100,000 and 500,000 eggs. Then they die. The young animals then emerge from the egg in a so-called planktonic phase. As tiny octopuses, they drift through the open sea for up to three months and feed on shrimp larvae. “A particularly nutrient-rich current can make a decisive difference in this phase for the growth and death rate of the octopus,” says Bonnaud-Ponticelli. Little is known about how temperature, currents or the overfishing of natural predators actually interact.
The fishermen were initially indifferent to these hypotheses. They rejoiced at such a “gift from heaven”. Octopus sells well, with much of the catch being exported to Spain and Portugal for around 7 euros per kilo.
Meanwhile, however, there is skepticism on the cutters. Because in order to fuel their rapid growth, the insatiable predators mainly eat scallops, lobsters and lobsters. These expensive delicacies are traditionally served in France for Christmas. “This year we only caught half as many scallops as we did last,” says Olivier Le Gurun. “If it continues like this, we will have a problem at Christmas and especially in the coming year.”
Laure Bonnaud-Ponticelli, on the other hand, thinks it is premature to sound the alarm now: “When a larger predator returns to an ecosystem, that is initially a positive signal.” Octopuses are at the top of the food chain and are essential links in an intact marine ecosystem. The octopuses especially like to eat whales, dolphins and sea lions. “Just because they bring less money to French consumers than lobsters does not mean that octopuses are less valuable for the ecosystem.”
No matter how the stocks develop in the future: This year, French Christmas delicacies will be eaten under water rather than in the living room.