Image: El País / FIS

The Galician octopus: a rare commodity that disputes the throne with that of the Sahara

The following is an excerpt from an article published by El País:

Most of the cephalopods consumed in Spain are imported from North African countries

Octopus about to be auctioned at a Dakhla auction. Image: Daniel Atanes. Source: El País

Cephalopods have been in the human diet for a few thousand years. The octopus was depicted on Bronze Age pottery, on Greek frescoes, on Roman mosaics. Aristotle thought that lobsters died of terror if they fell into the same nets as the cunning eight-tentacled bighead (he also believed, by the way, that it was a rather stupid animal, because it approaches the hand that plunges into the water). Territorialist, with complex behavior, it is admired for its amazing camouflage skills and for how good its meat tastes. Its short life, of about two years, usually passes in shallow waters, where it feeds on crustaceans, molluscs or fish, depending on whether it is near a beach or rocks. These foods give the characteristic taste to octopus vulgaris, which is the species that is consumed in most of the continent, and which lands on the plates of thousands of beach bars every summer, although it is tastier in winter, fished in colder waters.

The data on its production and consumption are as elusive as the animal itself, but one thing is clear: in Spain almost all the octopus comes from the Canary-Saharan Bank. Its mainland capital is Dajla (or Dakhla), a city in Western Sahara occupied by Morocco, before any other Galician or Mediterranean port. Another certainty is that the price has skyrocketed in recent times.

According to the 2022 Food Consumption Report of the Ministry of Agriculture, the intake of octopus and cuttlefish (the data is not provided separately) experienced a sharp drop of 27% in the last year, to less than one kilo per person per year, up to 43,839 tons. Octopus vulgaris fishing in national waters does not reach 5,000 tons (2021), although in some years, such as 2019, that figure almost doubles. So, being very optimistic, the demand is covered by national catches in barely a third of the total, calculates Roberto Romero, general director of Aquaculture of the Nueva Pescanova Group, who for years has been investigating its reproduction in captivity. "About two thirds of everything consumed is imported from Morocco or Mauritania." And Galician, the octopus has little: the catch base of the Xunta reports unloadings of just over 2,000 tons per year in ports of the autonomous community (with oscillations, in recent years).

In Galicia this campaign, which began just over a month ago, is progressing with fewer catches and rising prices, according to provisional data provided by the Department of Fisheries. The prices are 12% higher than the average of the last ten campaigns: "In fact, the average price is the second highest in the historical series", they respond from the administration. In the market it goes for 10 euros (USD 10.93) per kilo compared to the 8.6 average for 2022. José Manuel Rosas, a fisherman from the Bueu brotherhood (Pontevedra) is concerned about the drop in landings: "I am afraid to be a bad campaign”.

Matter of taste

Rosas defends that the Galician octopus is the tastiest, and that many restaurants give a pig for a poke. "I'm not saying that the rest is bad, but if we taste a Moroccan octopus and a Galician one without seasoning, without disguising, the nuances are unmistakable." Aesthetically and genetically the same, at least the Galician differs from the African in one thing: you have to be a good cook so that the skin does not fall off. If it is not cooked to its point, it ends up naked, "although the flavor is still fabulous," defends the fisherman. The brotherhoods tried to promote a quality seal to differentiate the product from the estuaries — they put each individual a plastic tie on the siphon that included a barcode and a QR code with information on where the fish had been caught. The failure. "Here there is no culture of brand consumption and the distributors were not interested in differentiating it, they took the tie off." [Continues...]

Author: Maria Fernandez | The Country | Read the full article by clicking the link here (only available in Spanish)

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