When Chris Chesterfield goes to get his pots out, he usually waits for cuttlefish or spider crabs. But lately the Cornish fisherman has been ambushed and outnumbered.
“You only have one or two arms pulling them up,” he says, “and there are eight of them pulling you down.”
An unprecedented number of octopuses have been reported in Cornish waters in recent weeks, prompting celebrations and concerns about a “population explosion.”
“I’ve been fishing for 40 years and I’ve never experienced that amount,” says Mylor’s Cameron Henry, who fishes with his two brothers.
He first noticed the rise in late May, when he began removing pots of lobster and cuttlefish that were very empty after an eight-legged thief first reached the bait or reward. “We had no seafood, just leftover seafood.”
A few days later, Henry was also catching the culprits, sometimes two or three for a pot: “You can already imagine how fun it is to get them out.”
Common octopus is a rare sight in British waters despite the unusual number of sightings on the Cornish coast in recent weeks. Photography: Shannon Moran
For Chesterfield, which operates alone from Mevagissey on its 30-foot trawler, pop overloading poses an even greater logistical challenge.
Larger specimens extend 1.2 m (4 feet) when suspended on deck, if you can get them to stand still long enough, he says. “They just throw their tentacles over you and turn upside down, literally. When they come out of the pot, they stick to the deck, they stick to their legs, it’s endless.”
On a day in early June, Chesterfield says he caught 260kg of octopus, totaling about 150 creatures. In a normal year I would expect to take half a dozen.
“There have been many days where you stretch 100kg, no problem,” he says. “Sometimes there are five or six in a pot.”
The Cornwall Wildlife Trust, which coordinates voluntary monitoring of local marine life, says the “huge” amount of octopus sightings in the region recorded not only by fishermen but also by divers and divers point to a rare population boom.
Despite its name, the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) is a rare sight in British waters, says Matt Slater, the trust’s marine conservation officer. “In a normal year, we only expect a couple of sightings and a couple of very excited divers, but now we get reports all the time, which is great.”
Like many octopuses, the species only lives one or two years, but produces up to 500,000 eggs, which means that favorable conditions can cause massive population fluctuations.
According to records kept by the Marine Biology Association, the last such event along the south coast of England was more than 70 years ago, in the summer of 1948. “of pops in 1899.
“It got to the point where fishermen were really worried about their livelihoods,” Slater says. “They were finding them in rock pools and even laying eggs there, which is not normal.”
A fishing boat returns to the port of Mevagissey, Cornwall. Photography: Tom Nicholson / Reuters
While some consider octopus to be a delight, there is less demand from UK consumers than for the crustaceans they eat, which makes anglers worried they would compete for their catch this summer. “We’re seeing so many that it won’t take long to fish an area,” Henry said.
He has easily sold the octopus he has fished so far, but has warned that if the figures continue to spiral it could be a problem: “You will end up flooding the market, the price will go down and you will end up not being. able to get rid of it “.
He and Chesterfield say sightings have dwindled in recent days, suggesting that this particular consortium may move on, to venture around Land’s End or the sea.
However, pop booms may become more frequent in the future. Like jellyfish, octopuses have been found to adapt more quickly than other species to the changing marine ecosystem. It has already been found that many species have expanded their distribution with warming waters, while a study published last year found that octopuses can also withstand changes in acidity levels better than other species. .
Slater, at least, is excited about the boom. A member carrying a cephalopod squad card, he used to work in an aquarium and says individual animals came to recognize his face and favored him over other staff members.
Sign up for First Edition, our free daily newsletter, every business day in the morning at 7am
“A pop plague, for me, is something to celebrate,” he says. “I was hoping that one day I could see one of these big population explosions, and I think this could be a very intense year.”
Slater encourages members of the public to report any sightings of pop on the Cornwall Wildlife Trust website, but Henry and Chesterfield, on the front line, fear they will be invaded.
They both say they “humanly send” their octopus catch quickly with a knife between their eyes, to the creature’s central brain. That’s why “we haven’t been able to drag them all over the boat, like in previous years,” Chesterfield says. “It was a long, hard day until we found out.”