April 16, 2023 — After decades of research, closed-cycle octopus farming is close to becoming a reality. But it faces an existential threat from increasingly well-organized activist groups opposed to the farming of a creature believed by some scientists to possess higher-than-average intelligence and emotional capacity.
The most high-profile octopus farm in the works is Nueva Pescanova’s EUR 65 million (USD 74 million ) 4,000-square-meter Pescanova Biomarine Center facility in Puerto Las Palmas, on the island of Gran Canaria, in Spain’s Canary Islands, which will have the capacity to produce 3,000 metric tons of octopus annually.