Octopus Farming in the U.S. Doesn’t Exist, and a New Bill Wants to Keep It That Way

“A lot of people say an octopus is like an alien. But the strange thing is, as you get closer to them, you realize that we’re very similar in a lot of ways,” filmmaker Craig Foster said in the opening of the Oscar-winning 2020 documentary My Octopus Teacher. The film, which explored the unlikely friendship between Foster and a common octopus in the kelp-draped waters off South Africa, sparked public interest with cephalopods — not just for their high level intelligence, but also for their emotional complexity.

Now, two federal lawmakers want to ensure that these sea creatures, increasingly recognized as sentient, are not subjected to industrial farming. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) recently reintroduced a bill that seeks to prohibit commercial octopus aquaculture operations in the United States and the import of farmed octopus.

There is no active octopus industry in the United States. The country’s only known facility, an experimental farm in Hawaii, was shut down in 2023. Still, lawmakers still want to prevent the industry from gaining traction by banning commercial octopus farming.

“Octopus are smart, sentient creatures that have no business cooped up on commercial farms,” Whitehouse said in a release.

Murkowski said the legislation will help “sustain wild harvest opportunities” for Alaska fishermen and help protect the state’s marine ecosystem.

Since there is no federal law that explicitly regulates the welfare of marine invertebrates, the bill, if enacted, represents a first in legal protections for these marine species.

“It would be a recognition of scientific advances and a powerful statement on how so many of our laws and practices need to evolve to account for animals as more than just food or fiber,” Allison Ludtke, Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) legislative affairs manager, told Sentient in an email.

Neither Ethical Nor Sustainable, Advocates Argue

The bill would require importers to certify that they are not bringing in farmed octopuses from abroad. It also mandates that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gather data on how octopuses are harvested in trade programs under its jurisdiction. Fulfilling this mandate may prove difficult, however, given recent job cuts to the agency directed by the current Trump administration.

This latest legislative effort comes at a time when global demand for octopus has grown significantly. Reported catches have risen from 179,042 tons in 1980 to 355,239 tons in 2014. Octopus is still considered mostly a delicacy in countries such as Spain, Portugal, Japan, South Korea and China.

“Octopus farming has not been encouraged because it’s going to feed hungry humans. It’s been encouraged as an exotic, high value product. And so this is not really about human survival,” Jennifer Jacquet, who teaches environmental science and policy at the University of Miami, tells Sentient.

Octopuses are not currently farmed for human consumption at commercial scale. However, Spanish seafood company Nueva Pescanova has long had plans to build the world’s first commercial octopus farm in the Canary Islands. The company’s permit applications are still under review.

Nueva Pescanova has claimed that farming octopus in tanks will reduce pressure on wild populations. But the proposal has been met with international backlash, including from scientists and animal welfare advocates who warn that farming octopuses is neither ethical nor sustainable.

“Octopuses require mental stimulation but are also solitary, territorial creatures and standard aquaculture practices, such as shared tanks and routine handling, could lead to aggression, injury, stress and even cannibalism or self-mutilation,” wrote Ludtke.

Their diet could also impact wild fish populations. Octopuses are carnivores that can consume about three times their body weight in food, according to Ludtke. Farming them at a commercial scale will put additional pressure on wild fish stocks, she wrote to Sentient.

There are also animal welfare concerns. Keeping octopuses alive through their early developmental stages in captivity remains a challenge, according to Ludtke, and there is currently no commercial-scale method rendering them unconscious before death. Current practices — including clubbing, slicing, asphyxiation and chilling — are “inherently cruel, prolonged and painful,” Ludtke says.

Advocates for the bill also argue that octopus farming facilities could increase risk of nitrogen and phosphorus runoff that can create algal blooms, pointing to similar impacts from other existing aquaculture operations.

Mounting Evidence of Sentience

A 2021 review of over 300 studies by researchers from the London School of Economics and Political Science found “very strong evidence of sentience” in octopuses, indicating that they can feel pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement.

The United Kingdom’s Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act of 2022 officially recognized all vertebrates and certain invertebrates, including octopuses, as sentient animals. The UK has also extended legal protections governing use of animals in scientific research to the common octopus.

In the U.S., however, octopuses are not considered “animals” by the federal government under the Animal Welfare Act.

For Jacquet, the evidence for sentience is more than clear. “We have this incredible cognition as humans. We’re always marveling at our own intelligence, but we have parental care, and we have culture, and we pass that on, and we invest enormously in our offspring,” Jacquet says. Octopuses don’t have any of that, Jacquet says. “Octopuses do everything they do, learning it themselves.”

Advocates Seek Preemptive Ban

Whitehouse and Murkowski first introduced the bill in 2024. More than 100 scientists, including Jacquet, published a letter in the journal Science endorsing the bipartisan legislation and urging Congress to pass it swiftly. Despite this support, the bill stalled at the committee level.

The reintroduced bill still faces challenges, its supporters say, including competing priorities in Congress and questions from lawmakers about its urgency, especially since there is no active octopus farming industry in the U.S.

“In response, I’d say this is a prime opportunity to address this — to follow the science on why this species cannot be ethically or sustainably farmed,” Ludtke wrote to Sentient, rather than try to “remediate the impacts these facilities would have on the environment and biodiversity.”

“This is about getting in front of a major potential scale problem before it starts,” Jacquet says.

At the state level, Washington state was the first to preemptively ban octopus farming, followed by California. In Spain, the national parliament is set to debate a bill that would ban both the farming and commercial trade of octopuses.

“There is no major opposition in place because this industry does not exist yet,” Jacquet says. “It’s very much on the cusp of being a reality.”