[Animals] Freezers take the helm in the scientific race for octopus farming

[UltimaTexCS]

"There is still everything to write about the octopus. They are too intelligent animals, much more than a fish, and infinitely superior to a mussel. Even their babies have character, and you see that when they get angry they throw you a microscopic cloud of ink. They are shy, they distrust, they are afraid to eat what you give them. They are sensitive and demand very particular living conditions, which is why they are so difficult to raise. " Álvaro Roura, soul of the Ecobiomar group at the Institute for Marine Research (IMM) of the CSIC (Higher Council for Scientific Research) in Vigo, describes with "fascination" a species that has spent years researching in its wild environment. And he thinks that if it takes so long to achieve the industrial cultivation of the cephalopod (after more than 20 years of investigations in Spain that began on the planet more than half a century ago) it is because they tried to domesticate it in laboratory tanks before knowing its natural mechanisms in the sea.

Many aspects of the life of the octopus are still "a mystery". And Roura has taken the time to discover part of them before shutting herself up with the larvae at the CSIC since a year and a half ago Armadora Pereira, one of the leading brands in the frozen octopus sector in Galicia, decided to embark on a scientific career for lead captive breeding. In the Galician city, two centers dependent on the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities work daily with this mission, currently separately: the IIM team, led by Ángel F. González, and the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), under the command of Pedro Domingues. The pulse has been joined in recent months by Nueva Pescanova, which will have preference in the IEO patent, supposedly very close to the goal.

Commercial octopus aquaculture can take two to four more years to become a reality. "This is the great business moment to invest in research," says Roura. "Armadora Pereira and Nueva Pescanova have gotten wet because they are finally seeing results." The key is to achieve an à la carte diet that serves as an alternative to the unviable diet based on crab larvae, a prohibitive delicacy for any fish farm, on which octopus larvae feed in the sea. After countless failed trials and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of tiny octopuses (death rates of 97% to 99% in the first month and a half of life), the menu is being refined along with environmental variables of tanks in a fight for higher survival rates.

The key is to achieve an à la carte diet that serves as an alternative to the prohibitive diet of crab larvae that octopuses require in their first phase of life.

In this war, every extra day that the larvae manage to live is a victory. The percentages of living individuals that manage to settle are secrets jealously guarded in scientific institutes, but the Vigo Oceanographic, which works on this mission with Tenerife, assures that its latest results are "spectacular". Right now there are juvenile specimens (those that after the larval phase, after two months of life, settle to the bottom to develop until adulthood) in the two research centers in Vigo. If everything runs its course, within a year they will be one kilo octopus.

This strange king of the cephalopods that seems to have come from another planet has never been so in demand, nor has it been so scarce, nor has it been as expensive as now. That of the Galician estuaries is exported to Asian markets and the United States while here the imported from Morocco is consumed, captured in the Canarian-Saharan bank. It is the same Octopus vulgaris, but it does not taste the same or have the same texture. The Galician is darker and has longer arms because it has adapted to a rocky bottom compared to the sandier one in the south.

On the eve of the closure imposed by the Xunta at the gates of last summer, and due to the shortage, the Lugo City Council announced the general increase in the price of the 250-gram ration at the city's patron saint festivities: 50%, from eight to twelve euros. It was the never seen before, but the example of this unpo[CENSORED]r decision was followed everywhere. The tapas are getting smaller and smaller and the octopus á feira has become a luxury item.

Álvaro Roura, from the CSIC, has discovered that the three-millimeter paralarvae travel in surface currents up to 200 kilometers from the coast and return over time as juvenile specimens