"Balancing on a railroad-tie-size beam of a platform floating in Spain's Vigo Bay, Ricardo Tur crouches and points below. Dangling several feet underwater is a pen the size of a garden shed, home to 80 octopuses. I squat too, hoping to glimpse even a single arm-there are 640 of them down there! In my excitement, I lean too far and almost fall in."
"Veiga and his fellow fishermen retain permission to capture young adults, house them in shelters made of PVC pipe, and feed them fishing discards and special octopus food through a yellow tube that snakes down from the surface. Veiga tells me that the animals 5 feet below us are a month old. Once they've reached 6 pounds, in another two months or so, Samertolameu can sell them-for about $45 each on a good day-at Vigo's daily fish auction."
A 65-by-82-foot batea in Vigo Bay houses pens that contain dozens of Octopus vulgaris. The farm keeps about 80 octopuses per pen and uses PVC shelters and a yellow feeding tube to deliver fishing discards and specialized octopus feed. The operation runs amid nearly 500 mussel-farming bateas near one of Europe’s busiest fishing ports. The Samertolameu Pot Fishers Association received an experimental license in 1998 to fatten roughly 2,000 wild-caught octopuses annually. Once octopuses reach about 6 pounds, they are sold at Vigo's daily fish auction for roughly $45 each.
Read at Fast Company
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