Spain prepares the world’s 1st octopus farm – 7/2/2023 – Market

Spain is preparing to build the world’s first underwater octopus farm in the Canary Islands. The initiative by the company Nueva Pescanova intends to supply, by 2030, 1% of all the octopus consumed on the planet.

Currently, between 300,000 and 400,000 tons of octopus are caught and eaten each year. These are all wild octopuses, taken directly from the seas by small fishermen or large companies.

Deep down, the underwater farm has an enormous ambition: to domesticate the species and transform our relationship with these cephalopods into something similar to the one that humanity has had for thousands of years with pigs or cattle. The idea, of course, has been giving rise to enormous controversy between activists and part of the scientists.

Research has already been carried out for about five years by the company at its Pescanova Biomarine Center in Galicia, in northwest Spain. According to the company’s aquaculture director, Roberto Romero Pérez, the scientists have already reached the fifth generation of octopuses born in their artificial pools.

“This means that today’s animals are already the great-great-grandchildren of those we capture in the wild for the first reproduction,” Pérez said in an interview with Sheet. “Five times we managed to get them to reproduce in the center. It means that we already have enough technology to not depend on animals from the wild environment for cultivation, so to speak, industrially. Which means a sustainable culture.”

The farm is fully designed, with four types of pools for the different growth stages of the cephalopods, and is now awaiting permits provided by the government of the Canary Islands, an autonomous Spanish community off the southern coast of Morocco. The cost to build the farm, which should take two years, is estimated at €65 million (R$340 million)

The intention, says the director, is to reach 3,000 tons of octopus per year from the fourth year of activity, starting with 500 tons in the year of inauguration, perhaps in 2026 or 2027. To produce 3,000 tons of meat, it takes about a million octopuses.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reports that, in 2018, 377 thousand tons of wild octopus were consumed, which has been falling due to the shortage caused by the fishing industry. More than 50% of this production came from China, Mexico and Morocco.

In Spain, 80% of the octopus consumed is imported and only 20% is caught in the country. Nueva Pescanova’s research collaborates with eight other research centers and universities in Spain, Portugal and Mexico.

“Forty years ago, octopus in Galicia was almost a poor man’s food, it wasn’t much appreciated. But in recent years, it has become almost a luxury item. gastronomic culture began to eat it. For example, the US, which greatly increased world demand,” said Pérez.

Reproduction is not fast, as Octopus vulgaris, from the coasts of Spain, reaches sexual maturity after a year. “This species lives for a maximum of two years. Soon after reproducing the first time, it dies. The female, after being fertilized, lays the eggs and does not eat, just cleaning and protecting the nest from predators until the larvae come out of the eggs. That’s it. It also happens in our cultivation cycle.”

“In our experimentation center, we are trying to do the same thing that happens in nature, but under controlled conditions of temperature, quality of water, oxygen, food, etc. Which is not easy, because many aspects of the cephalopod cycle are still are unknown to science.”

There are several criticisms of the Pescanova project and they began in 2021, as soon as the company began to send documentation for the authorities to authorize the construction of the farm. In February 2022, the spokesperson for the Animalist Party against Animal Abuse (Pacma) took a position, citing a study by the London School of Economics and Political Science.

“Octopuses are sentient animals [capacidade de sentir sensações e sentimentos de forma consciente]intelligent and solitary”, said Iris Sánchez, adding that the farm will “condemn them to live in a reduced and limited space together with other individuals, with all the psychological and physical damage that this can cause”.

“I think they are attributing human qualities to animals,” replied Roberto Pérez. “The octopus has a series of very striking characteristics for us. When the octopus solves certain problems in nature, it does not mean that it is intelligent, but that it has skills acquired in its evolutionary history, like all other animals. biology to consider an animal intelligent is to have a central nervous system, as in mammals, and the octopus does not.”

Regarding space, Pérez says that, in fact, octopuses in nature act according to the principle of territoriality, but that this changed naturally when they started to live in pools.

“The scientific bibliography says that wild animals, when placed in cultivation conditions with optimal conditions —mainly of food availability—, adapt to behaviors that they don’t have in nature”, he stated.

“The animal reacts differently and does not compete with its peers. These animals have never seen a predator in their lives. Therefore, we see in our facilities that they are able to coexist in a completely peaceful way.”

Activists, who demonstrated against it in the Canary Islands, also denounced that the company intends to breed between 10 and 15 octopuses per cubic meter, which Pérez admitted to the report as correct. However, he said, that number is a consequence of all the research, which has studied the extent to which animals can live together without it affecting their well-being and growth.

Another controversial point is the way in which octopuses are sacrificed in a controlled farm. Activists have said that putting animals in ice water to die is extremely slow and cruel. However, Pérez stated that this is not an option.

“European legislation, which we are obliged to comply with, allows three methods of sacrifice for animals in captivity on the continent: blow to the head, electric shock or immersion in ice. Immersion in ice water is a method widely used in aquaculture all over the world and studies say that the animal becomes lethargic when in contact with water close to 0º C and dies in a few minutes.”

Warning, spoilers! If you are against sacrificing animals for human consumption, please do not read the next paragraphs.

Like a good Galician, Pérez shared his favorite recipe for octopus, or pulpo in Spanish. “In Galicia, we have pulpo at the fair, which is cooked and then sliced ​​with oil, salt and paprika. It got that name because it was sold at fish fairs, a very typical dish.”

“It can accompany boiled potatoes, which have the same ingredients. My grandmother used to cook the potatoes in the same water, after cooking the octopus. Outside Madrid, this dish is called pulpo à galega”, he concluded.