Friend or foe? Octopuses swarm in UK waters

Regulators are due to meet fishing industry representatives on Wednesday as the sector grapples with an "explosion" of octopus in British waters.

Fishers along England's southwest coast have noticed a boom in the numbers and size of common octopus in the last few months.

"As of February this year, there was just a massive explosion in the population of octopus," said Alan Steer, a crab fisher based in Devon.

"We went from catching nothing to catching 1,000 kilograms a day," with each cephalopod weighing between 2.5-3.5kg, he told Sky News.

The octopus is a valuable catch, fetching more at the fish market than the crab that many local fleets are designed to fish for.

And it's just as well, because the eight-limbed creatures are also devouring local crab and lobster species, leaving some fishers empty-handed.

"Since the octopus have turned up now, we are seeing massive devastation to the crab and lobster and scallop stocks in the pots," he said, with just empty crab and lobster shells rattling around inside.

He reckons his crab and lobster catches are down by about 70%.

More research needed

The common octopus has long been present in British waters, but scientists say more research is needed to understand the causes of the recent bloom. It could be due to warmer waters or that there are fewer predators like tuna, cod, and sharks.

The octopus can creep in and out of the pots through small openings designed to allow small crabs and lobsters to escape, a conservation measure to maintain the populations.

But the boon for those cashing in on the octopus may be short-lived.

Previous "blooms" of octopus, recorded in 1899, 1950 and 2022, saw the animals stick around for a season or two, before disappearing in cold winters.

It can then take crab and lobster stocks three or four years to recover, Mr Steer told Sky News.

'Real concern'

"It's good at the minute... but our real concern is this is another cycle that we've seen in the past and they will disappear along with any crab fishery that was already there."

In the meantime, the conservation body that enforces the escape hatch rule has come with a workaround.

The Devon and Severn Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority (IFCA) said the escape holes can be closed off if fishers were trying to catch octopus only, in which case they'd have to throw any other catch back into the sea.

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Sarah Clark, its deputy chief officer, told Sky News the influx was a "concern".

She said: "We're going to be trying to gather as much information about octopus and what we do in the next coming months, years, if the octopus fishery remains within the South West. And that's obviously a big 'if', because we don't know if the octopus will be here again next year."

On Wednesday, they will meet government regulator the Marine Management Organisation and the fishing industry, to find out what support fishers need.

A series of meetings are focussing on collecting data, the impact on other species and how to determine whether the octopus are here to stay.

Dr Zoe Jacobs, from the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), said the recent "marine heatwave", which has seen water temperatures 2.3C higher than average, might be behind the reported early sightings of barrel jellyfish, increased numbers of seabass and pods of dolphins spotted in shallow inshore regions.

She said: "It may also be behind the recent spike in octopus. We need to improve our monitoring of such species to collect as much evidence as we can to understand if the marine heatwave is indeed driving this sudden influx of warm-water species into coastal waters."