The Great British Cephalopod Slaughter

The UK fishing industry is celebrating. Not because of innovation, or progress, or anything remotely commendable, but because warmer waters have brought a sudden boom in octopuses off the coasts of Devon and Cornwall.

They’re calling it a “financial bonus.” Markets are flooded. Cafe walls are painted in tribute. Even a Christmas decoration named Octavia is now lit up nightly in Brixham, as if stringing up a mollusc in fairy lights makes this grotesque harvest more palatable.

In March, temperatures in the region surged 2 to 4°C above seasonal norms, triggering an explosion in octopus numbers. The response from the industry? Trawlers doubled down. Forty-nine-year veteran fishmonger Ian Perkes calls it a once-in-a-career event. Trawlers are scooping up 36 tonnes a day, compared to just 200kg last year. They're delighted. The seabed is “full of them,” they say. And they want it emptied.

This is not a happy accident. This is the direct result of human-induced climate breakdown, a symptom of global heating that now serves as a payday for those accelerating the crisis.

And it gets darker.

There’s no quota for octopus. No limits. No protections. These highly intelligent beings, capable of complex problem-solving, play, and dreams, are being captured en masse and sold for profit. They’re fetching £8 a kilo, with 70–80% exported abroad. Spain, Morocco, Mauritania, all part of a sprawling market that commodifies minds with nine brains and three hearts as if they were sacks of flour.

Meanwhile, octopuses are being blamed for doing what any intelligent, hungry being would do: finding food. They’re entering crab pots and eating what’s inside. And rather than questioning whether we should be laying those traps in the first place, the industry is debating how to redesign them to catch more octopuses.

This isn't economic opportunity. It's ecological opportunism. It’s animal exploitation dressed up as commerce. And it's being greenlit by a government that, on paper, recognises octopuses as sentient.

Yes, in 2021, the UK updated its Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill to include cephalopods like octopuses, based on overwhelming evidence that they experience pain, joy, excitement, and more. Over 300 studies were reviewed. Experts at the London School of Economics confirmed what anyone who's ever observed an octopus already knew: these animals feel. They suffer.

And yet… nothing changed.

Sentience was recognised, but not protected. The law, full of promises and caveats, was neutered before it was born. Fisheries weren’t impacted. Commercial slaughter methods, however horrific, were left untouched. And now we’re witnessing exactly what that loophole has enabled: an open season on sentient beings, sanctioned by silence.

They’re not “stock” or “units.” These are individuals with brains in each limb, who can navigate mazes, use tools, and taste with their skin. They don’t live long, but they live fully. They explore. They observe. They bond. And now, they die. In bulk.

So let’s stop calling this a “boom” like it’s some kind of prize. Let’s call it what it is: a massacre, sparked by climate breakdown, driven by profit, and cheered on by those with their hands in the pots.

If octopuses are truly recognised as sentient, as the UK government claims, then this should be a scandal, not a celebration.

If we're serious about respecting sentience, then the killing must stop, not scale up.

And if we want a liveable future, maybe, just maybe, we stop glorifying financial windfalls that come from ecological collapse and start talking about justice. For the oceans. For the climate. And for those whose lives are treated as currency just because they happen to live beneath the waves.

Octopuses don’t belong in pots. They belong in the sea. Let them be.