{"id":2206714,"date":"2026-08-20T18:00:01","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T17:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?p=2206714"},"modified":"2026-08-15T13:24:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T12:24:32","slug":"too-smart-to-eat-why-octopus-farms-are-such-a-slippery-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/too-smart-to-eat-why-octopus-farms-are-such-a-slippery-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Too smart to eat? Why octopus farms are such a slippery problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span>n 2022 Nueva Pescanova, Spain\u2019s largest fisheries business, announced it was investing \u20ac65m (\u00a356m) in the\u00a0world\u2019s first industrial octopus farm\u00a0and processing plant near the Canary Islands\u2019 port of Las Palmas.<\/p>\n

Despite the creatures being notoriously difficult to farm, the company predicted that by 2025 it would be producing 3,000 tonnes of octopus a year on Gran Canaria.<\/p>\n

There followed years of controversy, with activists and scientists condemning the plans to farm an animal lauded for\u00a0its apparent \u201cintelligence\u201d, which reached near-celebrity status five years ago thanks to the Oscar-winning documentary\u00a0My Octopus Teacher.<\/p>\n

Then, at the end of July 2026, Nueva Pescanova\u00a0shelved plans for the farm. But why \u2013 and with what implications for the future of octopus farming?<\/p>\n

A Guardian request for comment from Nueva Pescanova was met with silence but it told the Canary Islands\u2019 port authority in a letter that it was pulling out for \u201cbusiness and regulatory\u201d reasons.<\/p>\n

\"A
An octopus paralarva at 55 days \u2013 when young cephalopods move about with the water current.\u00a0Photograph: Nueva Pescanova<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Activists who have long opposed the farm were quick to claim a victory. \u201cSocial, scientific and political pressure has borne fruit, faced with this ethical and environmental atrocity,\u201d Spain\u2019s animal rights party, Pacma, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

When the Guardian\u00a0visited the company\u2019s research centre\u00a0in 2023, Roberto Romero P\u00e9rez, the marine biologist overseeing aquaculture at Nueva Pescanova, had said: \u201cThe truth is that we\u2019re finding the mood to be a bit more hostile than expected.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Silvia Fern\u00e1ndez D\u00edaz, a journalist at Canarias7 who has covered the story from the start, says that far from being a mass movement, demonstrations on the island against the project rarely attracted more than a few dozen protesters.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe the reality is that the farm didn\u2019t go ahead because it wasn\u2019t viable, not because of popular protest,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Sources at Las Palmas port authority confirmed that they had not been approached by anyone from Nueva Pescanova and no work had been done on building the farm.<\/p>\n

Ian Gleadall, a marine biologist at Tohoku University in Japan who has spent 50 years researching octopuses, says he has been trying for two years to get a response from Nueva Pescanova about the Canary Islands project without success.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe same thing happened here in Japan with the fisheries company Nissui,\u201d he says. \u201cThe company said they\u2019d cracked it and were going to be producing massive amounts of octopus but it never happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gleadall says octopuses have so far been virtually impossible to farm because the larvae of the common octopus spend at least 20 days floating in the water before they settle on the sea bed, making it difficult to move on to the next phase. Even then, he says, the hatchlings are so delicate that if anything goes wrong they die.<\/p>\n

He adds that another significant problem is what to feed the octopus: \u201cOne feed is a form of fish paste. But even if they eat it, they won\u2019t go on eating it because octopus are very finicky \u2013 they don\u2019t like to eat the same thing day in, day out.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you could solve the feed problem,\u201d he says, \u201cyou\u2019d probably spend more on feed than the octopus was worth on the market.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ethical objections to octopus farming are that the creatures are solitary and antisocial, as well as the\u00a0studies showing \u201ccompelling evidence\u201d of sentience.<\/p>\n

Richard Schweid, author of\u00a0Life on the Octopus Farm, says many marine biologists hold that an octopus not only has nine brains but a mind. \u201c[This is] something that we generally associate with higher orders of mammals, like dogs, cats, primates and humans,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\"Ecologists
Activists in Madrid protest against Nueva Pescanova\u2019s plans to farm octopuses in Las Palmas. Photograph: Sopa\/Getty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The idea that the octopus is somehow like us \u2013 or at least like some of our pets \u2013 was fuelled by Craig Foster\u2019s film My Octopus Teacher, in which Foster appears to form a reciprocal relationship with a female octopus.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe octopus is a prime candidate for humans to anthropomorphise because it is so smart, so responsive, and yet so different as to be essentially unreadable,\u201d says Schweid.<\/p>\n

Whatever the reasons for the end of the Spanish enterprise, no one has yet successfully farmed octopuses, aside from\u00a0a small project in Mexico\u00a0that cultivated a different species from the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris<\/em>),\u00a0<\/em>found in the Mediterranean and Atlantic.<\/p>\n

While octopuses may be safe from farming for now, the UN\u2019s food agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization, estimates that about\u00a0370,000 tonnes of octopus are caught every year, much of them off Morocco and Mauritania. The principal markets are China and Japan, while Spain consumes about 40,000 tonnes a year, or almost 1kg per person.<\/p>\n

And warming waters globally means octopuses are finding their way on to plates in new territories. Over the past two years, for example, the\u00a0UK witnessed the biggest octopus bloom since 1950.<\/p>\n

Octopus grow fast, have a short lifespan, are high in nutrients and are much in demand, so there are plenty of incentives to find a way to farm them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe conversion rate of what an octopus eats into a high-protein, low-fat meat is much better than any land-based livestock,\u201d says Schweid.<\/p>\n

\u201cOctopus is potentially a more environmentally sustainable farmed meat than beef, pork or poultry, and in a world shaped by rising temperatures it could become a meat of choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the potency of the ethical argument against farming octopuses is likely to remain a strong weapon in the armoury of those who oppose it.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn octopus is a highly intelligent, naturally solitary wild animal,\u201d says Charlotte Reid, a campaigner at Compassion in World\u00a0Farming. \u201cThese are wild animals and they belong in the wild, not these underwater prisons.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article<\/a> by Stephen Burgen was first published by The Guardian on 13 August 2026. Lead Image: A common octopus at Frankfurt zoo in Germany. Photograph: Azoor Wildlife\/Alamy.
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