Octopus by Richard Schweid

Author:Richard Schweid
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Reaktion Books

Before this it has been sporadic. If we can produce these, we can produce tens of thousands. I’m very moved, and very proud of the people who work here. Sometimes a researcher like myself can dream of things outside of reality, but here the people do not have that luxury. We’ve shown today that our project can work in the real world.25

The plan for the Octopus Program called for land adjoining UNAM’s to be purchased by the Mayan women’s cooperative with grants and business development loans, and turned into an octopus farm. It was to have 30 outdoor tanks for reproduction and fattening and indoor facilities for incubation and pre-fattening, along with a processing plant and a small restaurant. Patent revenues for the structural and infrastructural solutions devised in the process would be divided equally between the university and the cooperative.

Unfortunately the land where this complex was set to be built became the object of conflict between those who wanted to develop it for tourists and those who wanted to use it for growing octopuses. The project became embroiled in bureaucracy and bitterness between neighbours, and in August 2010 the building housing 13,000 octopuses, which were in the process of growing large enough to be transferred to the outside tanks, was burned to the ground.26 The octopuses were killed and the installation destroyed. The fire was widely believed to have been set by someone who did not want to see the octopus farm prosper.

Slowly but surely, the cooperative’s members are rebuilding, determined to carry on with their aquaculture. Is there a market for farm-raised O. maya? It will be a while before that question is answered, as the project had to start again from scratch in 2011, but they hope to have octopus ready for the market before the end of 2013.

Most octopus eaters say there is little or no difference between the taste or texture of O. maya and O. vulgaris, but many in the global market – from Manhattan to Tokyo – hold out for the common octopus, if only because that’s what they’re used to, according to Vincent Cutrone, owner of the Octopus Garden, a wholesaler of octopus to some of New York’s finest restaurants. He is a short, trim, energetic man whose workday begins at 5 a.m. in Brooklyn, preparing the day’s octopuses for shipment and loading them on delivery trucks. That night, they will grace the plates of people dining in some of New York’s most exclusive restaurants. Cutrone told me he has yet to buy O. maya, because his customers want O. vulgaris.

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