May 28, 2025 — Aquaculture farmers in New Jersey grow everything from clams and oysters to trout, bass, and other fish popular with sport anglers.
They don’t farm octopuses. Several state lawmakers want to keep it that way and now are pushing legislation that would ban businesses from raising octopuses in captivity to sell as seafood.
Washington and California already have such bans in place. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) introduced a bill last summer in Congress that would have enacted a national ban, but it failed to advance. The only known octopus farm in the U.S., in Hawaii, shut down in 2023 after years of advocacy by animal rights activists, and a Spanish company’s plan to farm octopuses in the Canary Islands has also drawn opposition.
In Trenton Thursday, the Senate’s economic growth committee heard testimony on a bill that also would prohibit businesses from selling, possessing, or transporting farmed octopuses, with violators facing fines of up to $1,000 a day. They did not vote on the measure, with committee chair and bill sponsor Sen. Nilsa Cruz-Perez saying she would use public feedback to improve the bill.
“Why are we passing a law now to ban something which isn’t even happening in the state of New Jersey?” said Scot Mackey of the Garden State Seafood Association, which represents more than 1,200 commercial fishermen.