Euroviews. Reckless and harsh octopus farming plans must be stopped

Demand for octopus as food has grown significantly in recent decades. Yet with concerns around overfishing restricting the number of wild octopuses caught, businesses have been researching how they can farm them.

Crucially, octopuses are naturally solitary animals who will inevitably suffer in farm conditions. 

Confined in cramped indoor tanks of water, these intelligent, unique and sentient wild animals would cause them immense distress, causing aggression, and ultimately even cannibalism. 

They are also carnivorous, meaning they need to be fed wild fish in captivity — an unsustainable practice that would put extra pressure on already overexploited fish populations.

So, when seafood company, Nueva Pescanova, announced plans to build the world’s first commercial octopus farm in Gran Canaria in Spain in 2019, it was rightly met with worldwide public outrage.

Last week, Compassion in World Farming — along with fellow NGOs Eurogroup for Animals and AnimaNaturalis — revealed that the company’s assessment of the environmental impacts of the farm it plans to build failed to consider the significant threats it would pose to wildlife, the environment and public health. 

As a result, the Canary Islands Government rejected the assessment, highlighting a number of environmental and public concerns, and requested a far more detailed environmental assessment from the company.

These concerns include threats to local wildlife — such as protected dolphins, whales and sea turtles — through noise and water pollution as the proposed site is close to a Marine Protected Area (MPA). 

MPAs are areas of the ocean established to protect habitats, species and processes that are essential for healthy, functioning marine ecosystems so it is vital that