They have 500 million neurons, use tools, and solve puzzles. Now a Spanish company wants to pack them into tanks and kill them in ice slurry — a method so cruel that major retailers already ban it for fish.
In a shallow tank in northwestern Spain, an octopus made history. She wasn't the first octopus born in captivity, but she was part of a breakthrough that Spanish seafood giant Nueva Pescanova hopes will become a €65 million revolution: the world's first commercial octopus farm.
The company's executives see it as a global milestone, a solution to dwindling wild octopus populations that fetched 420,000 metric tons globally last year. But when marine biologist Dr. Elena Lara read through the leaked planning documents, one detail made her stomach turn: the octopuses would be killed by dumping them into tanks of ice slurry, where they would slowly freeze to death.
"It's a slow death," neuroscientist Dr. Peter Tse told the BBC. "It would be very cruel and should not be allowed." Tse, who studies octopus cognition at Dartmouth, isn't alone in his horror. Over 100 scientists have signed a letter published in the journal Science declaring octopus farming inhumane. The reason lies in what we've discovered about these shape-shifting sea creatures: they might be the closest thing to alien intelligence we'll ever encounter on Earth.
Consider what happened at the Sea Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany. Staff arrived one morning to find the facility in darkness. The power had shorted out. It happened again the next night, and the next. Finally, they caught the culprit on camera: Otto, a six-month-old octopus, had been climbing to the rim of his tank and squirting water at the 2000-watt spotlight above him. He was, apparently, annoyed by the brightness.
Otto's midnight rebellion hints at the profound intelligence that has scientists so troubled by Nueva Pescanova's plans. With 500 million neurons — roughly as many as a dog — octopuses can solve complex puzzles, use tools, and navigate mazes. Two-thirds of those neurons aren't even in their brain but distributed throughout their eight arms, allowing each limb to taste what it touches and even act independently. They've been observed stacking rocks to build dens, unscrewing jar lids from the inside, and in laboratory studies, learning by watching other octopuses.
But perhaps most remarkably, they appear to experience emotions. Research from the London School of Economics, reviewing over 300 scientific studies, concluded that octopuses are sentient — capable of experiencing pleasure and pain. The UK government was so convinced that it added octopuses to its Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act, making them the only invertebrates with such legal recognition.
Inside Nueva Pescanova's proposed facility at Las Palmas port in the Canary Islands, these solitary hunters would live in conditions that animal welfare groups describe as psychological torture. The planning documents, obtained by animal welfare organizations, reveal that octopuses would be packed 10 to 15 per cubic meter in tanks — a density that experts say would likely trigger aggression and cannibalism in creatures that naturally live alone. The facility would house around one million octopuses annually under constant artificial light to boost reproduction, despite octopuses' natural aversion to bright light.
The killing method is where the science of sentience collides most brutally with industrial efficiency. Octopuses would be submerged in 500-liter tanks of ice water at -3°C. Research on fish has shown that ice slurry without pre-stunning causes violent escape attempts before paralysis sets in. Death can take over nine minutes. Major retailers like Tesco and Morrisons already refuse to sell fish killed this way because it's considered too cruel.
"We should be ending factory farming, not finding new species to confine in underwater factory farms," says Elena Lara, research manager at Compassion in World Farming. The environmental math is equally troubling: octopuses are carnivores, requiring nine kilograms of fish to produce three kilograms of octopus meat. In an ocean already stripped of fish stocks, farming predators seems perverse.
The backlash has been swift and global. In Washington state, which became the first U.S. jurisdiction to ban octopus farming, legislators cited both ethics and economics — protecting wild fisheries from competition. U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Sheldon Whitehouse have gone further, introducing federal legislation called the OCTOPUS Act that would ban the practice nationwide and block imports of farmed octopus. "Octopus are smart, sentient creatures that have no business cooped up on commercial farms," Whitehouse said.
The timing is particularly striking given our evolving understanding of animal consciousness. Just as we're discovering that octopuses may share genetic markers for intelligence with humans, we're preparing to farm them like chickens. Jennifer Jacquet, an environmental scientist at New York University who co-authored "The Case Against Octopus Farming," points out the bitter irony: "Octopus farming has not been encouraged because it's going to feed hungry humans. It's been encouraged as an exotic, high-value product."
Nueva Pescanova maintains it has solved the technical challenges that stymied previous attempts at octopus aquaculture. The company says it has "eliminated aggression" through optimized tank conditions and that farming will reduce pressure on wild populations. After eight years of research, they've successfully raised five generations of common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) in captivity. But the Canary Islands government recently rejected the company's initial environmental assessment, demanding more comprehensive analysis of the facility's impact.
In Japan, where tako is a delicacy, researchers have tried for decades to crack the code of octopus farming. In Mexico, scientists work with the four-eyed octopus. But Spain is closest to commercialization, with Nueva Pescanova planning to produce 3,000 tonnes annually — about one million animals — by 2027.
The question haunting scientists isn't whether we can farm octopuses, but whether we should. In the coastal waters off South Africa, filmmaker Craig Foster spent a year diving with a wild octopus, documenting an interspecies friendship that captivated millions in the documentary "My Octopus Teacher." The film revealed an animal capable of trust, play, and perhaps something resembling affection. Now, as Nueva Pescanova's engineers fine-tune their ice slurry tanks, we face a test of our own evolution: Can we recognize intelligence and suffering even when it comes wrapped in eight arms and a boneless body?
The answer may come from an unexpected source. California and Hawaii have already moved to ban octopus farming. The European Union, which recognizes octopuses as sentient, faces pressure to block the Spanish facility. Even in Spain, protesters have taken to the streets of Madrid to oppose what they see as a new frontier in animal cruelty.
For now, octopuses destined for Nueva Pescanova's tanks swim in circles in their research facilities in Galicia, five generations removed from the ocean their ancestors knew. They are living proof that science can achieve the impossible. The question is whether we'll use that knowledge wisely, or whether the world's first octopus farm will stand as a monument to humanity's ability to industrialize suffering — even when we know better.
