Don’t make a meal out of octopus, urge campaigners

They’re low fat and low in calories but the real beauty of the octopus, say campaigners trying to save it from the dinner table, is that it’s high in IQ.

Experts at the National Sea Life Centre have joined with their Sea Life colleagues around the world in calling on the public to stop making a meal of octopus because of the growing body of evidence that it’s the smartest thing on eight legs.

Staff at the aquarium in Bray, Co Wicklow, say their experiences caring for octopuses have shown them to be sentient animals deserving of special status.

“It’s been suggested for years that octopuses are as intelligent as the average pet dog,” said curator Aisling Graham. “There are very few cultures who would consider eating a dog, and yet you can eat octopus in virtually any seafood restaurant anywhere.”

The difficulty for discerning diners is that menus rarely feature octopus, offering instead squid or calamari, the octopus’s ten-legged cousin, but often it is octopus on the plate so Sea Life is asking for all such dishes to be declined.

While that may be a sacrifice for those who love their cephalopod with a little garlic dip and lemon juice, Sea Lifers are asking diners to consider that their aquariums have been home to octopuses who can unscrew jar lids, manipulate a Rubix cube and get attention by deliberately squirting jets of water at staff walking by their tank.

“For many cultures they are simply another food item to be harvested from the sea, and getting people to think of them in the same category as intelligent mammals will be a huge challenge,” said Aisling Graham.

“It’s difficult to prove, but any aquarist who has worked for any length of time with octopuses will tell you they not only think, they are all individuals.

“They can sulk, usually by retreating into a hidey-hole and refusing to be coaxed out again, they sometimes get angry and turn their darkest colour and jet about their display in a strop, and you always know when they’re really happy. You just know.”

The campaign to preserve octopuses took on an added urgency following last month’s killing and eating by US tourists of an exceptionally rare six-legged octopus in Greece, and the hunting and killing of a giant Pacific octopus off the Washington State coast in the US earlier this year.

Sea Lifers are asking visitors to their centres to pledge never to eat octopus.

* The pledge can also be signed online at www.facebook.com/sealife.bray.