Why has the world’s first octopus farm in Gran Canaria been cancelled?

The world’s first octopus farm in Gran Canaria has been cancelled due to the difficulty of raising sufficient numbers of the creatures to make a profit.

The Spanish company Nueva Pescanova caused global outrage when it proposed the world’s first octopus farm in 2021, and there was widespread satisfaction following the announcement that the project had been cancelled last month.

But a report in Canarias7 says that it was not pressure by animal rights groups that led to the cancellation, but simply the difficulty of farming the eight-legged molluscs. In preliminary trials, only 15% of octopuses survived until adulthood.

This would mean an annual production of 30 tons of octopus, a hundredth of the 3,000 tons originally forecast.

The main problem in farming octopuses is feeding them. In the wild, they are voracious eaters but supplying the live feed that would sustain profitable numbers in farmed conditions has so far proved impossible. However, demand remains high. Octopus prices have soared in the last ten years due to demand from international markets, and a product that was once a regular feature on Spanish shopping lists has now become a luxury product.