I have represented recreational fishermen on New York’s
Marine Resources Advisory Council for just over 20 years, and throughout that
time, the Council’s April meeting was reserved for reviewing and commenting on pending
bills in the New York State Legislature.
This year, the April meeting will be held on April 14, so yesterday
morning found me perusing the bills that were likely to be on the meeting
agenda.
Typically, the list of pending bills includes some that
would create new duties for the Department of Environmental Conservation
(without also creating the new funding and new positions needed to get those
jobs done), some that would create tax breaks or other privileges for one
special interest group or another, some that extend the DEC’s authority to
regulate various species, some that impact licenses and permits of various
kinds, and some that would supposedly provide—or sometimes remove—protections
for particular species. But this time I came
across one bill that stopped me cold.
It was A 08043,
“AN
ACT to amend the environmental conservation law, in relation to octopus
farming.”
That was unexpected.
According to the bill memo, the legislation
“Provides that no person shall sell any octopus that was
bred, raised, or harvested under controlled conditions for the purpose of human
consumption.”
My immediate question was why?
As far as I knew, no one was farming octopus here in New
York, and I wasn’t aware of anyone planning to start an octopus farm. In truth, I didn’t know that octopus
could be farmed. After looking
into the matter, I learned that there
isn’t a single octopus farm anywhere in the world, although a company in Spain
is trying to start one; the United
States once had a single such farm, located in Hawaii, but it ran into problems
and eventually shut down.
“The farming of octopus is a highly concerning practice quickly
gaining global momentum. Numerous
environmental organizations, scientists, and policymakers have expressed grave
concern over the practice, as it poses severe animal welfare, environmental,
public health, and economic risks.
Currently there are no businesses engaged in octopus farming in New York
and this bill, modeled after the ones passed in Washington and California, aims
to ban the practice to ensure no one can in the future.”
The bill would impose severe penalties, in the form of a
fine
“not to exceed one thousand dollars for each octopus,
or parts of such octopus, sold, offered for sale, or traded [emphasis added]”
in violation of the proposed new law.
To put that in context, the
fine for illegal sale of a single fish, mollusk (and an octopus is a mollusk,
after all), or other wildlife, so long as its value is under $250, cannot exceed
$500, and the fine for illegally selling any number of fish, regardless of
value, can’t exceed $1,500, so A 08043 is effectively declaring octopus farming
to be a greater offense than illegally commercializing any fish, shellfish, or
other creature that naturally occurs in New York waters—presumably
including the common
octopus, Octopus vulgaris, which, although uncommon, does live off New
York’s coast.
“The Committee’s support is grounded in animal welfare,
environmental, and public health concerns.
The report highlights scientific evidence of octopus sentience and the
difficulty of providing humane captive care, pointing out that octopuses’
intelligence, solitary nature, high feed requirements, and susceptibility to
stress and disease make farming ethically and practically problematic. It also cites potential environmental risks
such as pollution, wild fish depletion to produce feed, and escape of farmed
animals and the lack of clear benefits for local fisheries or communities…”
That made me curious about why such considerations were so
unique to octopus farming, and not to other forms of aquaculture—or land-based
agriculture, for that matter—that they justified the current bill, so I turned
to Google for answers.
When I did, I quickly found a plethora of articles opposing
octopus farms, and the identities of the website owners said a lot about where
the opposition to such farms was coming from.
In just the first two pages of my search, I found negative articles
published by groups with names such as “Animal
Survival International,” “Animal Welfare Institute,”
“Compassion in
World Farming,” “Eurogroup
for Animals,” and “Viva! The Vegan Charity,” which provided a
pretty strong clue that much of the opposition to octopus farms arose from pure
emotion, rather from the sort of facts and hard data that ought to be used to
make decisions on fisheries policy.
An
article appearing on the Vox news and opinion website cemented that
impression when it noted that
“public interest in octopuses swelled 2021, when the hit Netflix
documentary My Octopus Teacher—which captivated audiences with a story
of a human relationship with a wild octopus in South Africa—won the Oscar for
best documentary…A year later, the UK passed a law declaring that all
vertebrate animals and some invertebrates—including cephalopods—are sentient,
and that future laws need to consider their welfare.”
Once again, we seem to have emotion, rather than data,
driving policy. That even extends to
legitimate and respected scientists who also oppose octopus farming. For example, an article, “The
Case Against Octopus Farming,” which was written by four bona fide academics
engaged in cephalopod research and appeared in the journal Issues in Science
and Technology, begins,
“Octopuses stand out among invertebrates for their complex behavior. They are capable of problem solving,
mimicking their surroundings using color changes that take place on a scale of
seconds, outwitting predatory sharks, discriminating individual humans,
engaging in playful behavior, and hunting in response to cooperative signals
sent by fish. As these patterns of
behavior suggest, octopuses (as well as some other cephalopods) have
sophisticated nervous systems and large brains.
“Given their exceptional abilities, one might ask whether
humans should be eating octopuses at all, but here we want to raise a different
ethical question. As global demand for
octopus grows, especially in affluent markets, so have efforts to farm
them. We believe that octopuses are
particularly ill-suited to a life in captivity and mass production, for reasons
both ethical and ecological.”
Reading that, one might ask why the same concerns shouldn’t
stand in the way of farming animals such as chickens, cattle, sheep, and that intellectual giant
of the barnyard, the pig, which has reportedly been observed
“using a joystick to move a pointer on a computer screen, understanding
human instructions, and using primitive tools.”
Yet, despite the pig’s proven intelligence, A 08043 makes no
effort to disrupt the supply chain of bacon, ham, and lard, but only to outlaw
octopus farms, which merely demonstrates the sort of irrational inconsistency
that results when emotion, rather than data-driven logic, inspires lawmakers’
actions.
The authors of the above-referenced article try to justify treating
the octopus differently from other farmed animals by saying that issues related
to land-based animal husbandry
“should lead us to ask whether we want to repeat mistakes already
made with terrestrial animals with aquatic animals, especially octopus.”
Of course, that question assumes that creating a system that
provides hundreds of millions of persons in the United States with readily
available and largely affordable protein is really a “mistake,” an assumption
that, once again, seems to be based, at least in part, on emotion although, to be
fair, the authors note that, unlike chicken or other commonly farmed animals,
octopus are a luxury food, and not something needed for day-to-day survival.
Still, emotions aside, the authors do point to some very problematic
aspects of octopus farming that should be considered before any such farm is
approved.
“The environmental impacts of aquaculture are well
known. They include pollution from
nitrogen and phosphorus released from feces and food decomposition; contamination
from fertilizers, algaecides, herbicides, and disinfectants; excessive use of
antibiotics; interbreeding and disease transmission between escaped fish and
wild varieties; and loss of natural habitat (such as mangrove swamps) needed
for farms. But the biggest ecological
concern is less familiar.
“Unlike terrestrial farmed animals, the majority of which
evolved as herbivores, most farmed aquatic animal species, including salmon,
trout, and shrimp, are carnivorous, and depend on fish protein and oil during
certain development stages. Feeding most
farmed aquatic animals puts additional pressure on wild fish and invertebrates
for fishmeal. Around one-third of the
global fish catch is turned into feed for other animals, roughly half of which
goes to aquaculture. Many fishmeal
fisheries are subject to overfishing and are declining.
“Reducing the ecological impact of catching fish to feed fish
means reducing the reliance on wild fish and invertebrates for fishmeal. One option is to focus aquatic farming on invertebrates
and other species lower on the food web, yet the percentage of farmed aquatic
species that need to be fed is increasing relative to species such as
freshwater carps, bivalves, and aquatic plants that require little to no feed…
“…But octopuses are atypical invertebrates as well as atypical
mollusks. They are both carnivorous
(none can survive on plants or algae alone) and behaviorally
sophisticated. Farming octopus in counterproductive
from perspective of environmental sustainability…”
The New York City Bar Association’s Animal Law Committee
made a similar argument, writing
“Octopuses are asocial, obligate carnivores and cannot
survive on plants and algae. Their carnivorous
diet requires large quantities of animal protein and they are behaviorally
sophisticated. Octopuses are known as ‘picky
eaters’ and will not thrive on discarded bycatch of fishermen. Their solitary nature require multiple tanks
or compartments, complicating the waste management system. The plan to farm multiple octopuses in a
sterile setting will allow feces and uneaten food to accumulate. Decomposition of feces and uneaten food fuels
bacterial activity that consumes oxygen and releases toxic nitrogenous
compounds like ammonia and nitrite. Wastewater
from aquaculture is typically discharged into the ocean. Even if the wastewater is filtered before
release, residual chemicals and bacteria will be discharged and could linger
and harm the local marine environment.
Pollution from octopus farming could alter coastal ecosystems, promote
harmful algae blooms and harm biodiversity…
“A related concern is the sustainability of octopus farming
due to the octopuses’ high ‘feed conversion ratio’…According to [the Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations’] 2024 SOFIA report, roughly one-fifth of the global marine
catch is reduced to fishmeal and fish oil, and recent FAO-summarized analyses
indicates that 75 percent of these marine ingredients are used in aquaculture
feed. The industrial production of
fishmeal and fish oil depletes marine resources in traditional fishing areas, reducing
the availability of fish for human consumption and driving up the cost of fish… [footnotes omitted]”
Those ecological concerns are valid, as are others regarding
the escape of aquacultured animals, the possibility of aquaculture introducing
diseases to wild populations, etc. But
they are not limited to octopus farms.
Any sort of open-water aquaculture operation, other than those limited
to bivalves or algae, creates the same sort of issues.
We have already seen hundreds
of thousands of potentially invasive Atlantic salmon escape from net pens in
Washington state. In
Australia, wild fish in areas adjacent to salmon farms were found to be “not
fit for human consumption” due to contamination with antibiotics that had rised
to five times the maximum safe level.
Other
consequences of open-water aquaculture, including pollution from feces and
uneaten food, the introduction of pesticides into the marine environment, and the
introduction of pathogens and parasites into wild fish populations, have been
recognized by scientists for a long time.
And that’s where A 08043, and all of the critics of octopus
farming, go wrong.
They succumb to the siren song of My Octopus Teacher,
obsess over the emotionally captivating topic of supposed octopus sentience,
and so focus on banning octopus farms, which exist nowhere in the United States
and, unless things have recently changed, nowhere in the world.
They waste time and resources attacking a nonexistent
industry that may never be biologically practical nor economically viable
while, at the same time, a very large and very real open-water aquaculture
industry, favored
by the current presidential administration, creates the very problems of
pollution, antibiotic contamination, parasitism, escape, and disease, on a far
larger scale than octopus farming could ever do, in the waters of the United
States, as well as in the waters of many nations throughout the world.
So, should you be able to open an octopus farm?
Probably not.
But then, you shouldn’t be able to open a farm for salmon,
striped bass, rainbow trout, Almaco jacks, or any other species of
free-swimming marine animal. At least
not in open water. They all create the
same real-world problems as octopus farms do, and on a far larger scale.
Octopus farms, since they don’t yet exist, just make an
easier target.
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