Octopus aquaculture describes the captive-raising of octopuses and commercial sale of their meat. A complex and labor-intensive form of farming, octopus aquaculture is being driven by strong market demand in the Mediterranean and in South American and Asian countries.[1] Annual global demand for octopus more than doubled from 1980 to 2019, from roughly 180,000 to about 370,000 tons.[2] The supply of octopus has been constrained by overfishing in many key fisheries[3] and proponents of farming suggest human-induced culturing could help restock natural populations.[4] Opponents of the nascent industry argue that cephalopod intelligence and emotional capacity, as well as the solitary and carnivorous character of octopuses, make them particularly ill-suited to intensive, captive breeding. Commercial sale may stimulate market demand, hastening rather than offsetting the decline in wild stocks.[5] An announcement that a Spanish firm would begin octopus aquaculture as early as 2022 prompted ethical and scientific controversy.
Octopuses live short lives, grow quickly and mature early[6] and they typically reach 2 to 3 kg, high weights for an invertebrate. Octopuses are 75 to 90% muscle at their total live weight,[7] basically a pure protein food with very little fat. In nature there is little overlap between successive generations,[8] which makes them sensitive to changing environmental conditions.[9] It is currently difficult to culture the early life stages of octopus and maintain high survival rates for their paralarvae,[10] mainly because of high mortality rates by poor zoo-technical conditions or equipment, and also because of conspecific cannibalism.[11] A requirement for live and high-quality food is another constraint: crab zoea[12] or rotifer are necessary, since Artemia, microalgae, or pellets is insufficient. These difficulties have limited the development of fully closed life cycle octopus hatchery systems. In 2021, Nueva Pescanova Group located in Spain, announced that they had achieved many generations of Octopus vulgaris by culture;[13] the conditions octopuses are to be kept in, type of food, and killing techniques were not disclosed.[5]