This article is partially about the impact on marine ecosystems, so don't avoid reading it if you think it is all about ethics, which is what the majority of the comments here mention.
"Given their exceptional abilities, one might ask whether humans should be eating octopus at all, but here we want to raise a different ethical question."
So we can eat stupid animals, but not the more intelligent ones, right? That's absolutely logically and ethically bonkers to just write this down as if it were a common piece of shared knowledge and give it for granted.
Ranking animals by intelligence is not the only way to decide your ethics of consumption. If I want to look close to home, I can consider the ethics of the First Nations people who have lived in the area I now live in. They have a sophisticated ethic of consumption that does not rely on intelligence-ranking. Or we can look at other points of view that privilege the land and its health, and direct decisions from there.
Blindness about our assumptions and hypotheses doesn't help the conversation. Let's set out our axioms.
As the New Guinea man said to the missionary, "If God didn't want us to eat people He wouldn't have made us out of meat."
For those who see the world through the experience frame, they will be more worried about the negative impacts toward an individual octopus, seeing it as an intelligent creature that shouldn’t need to endure our fishing practices.
For those that see the world through the existence frame, the potential genocidal and even eco-system crashing impact of overfishing or various fishing practices is more vital than what happens to any individual creature.
Maybe this would be better as two articles, one that appeals to each type.
You should point out the issue for all the tl;dr people.
The issue is that farming carnivorous seafood is a net ecosystem loss. This applies to more than just octopi.
In the case of an octopus, the conversion rate is about 3:1--you have to feed an octopus about 3 times it's weight in "other fish". Similar ratios are true for other carnivorous fish--none are less than 1.
Consequently, aquaculture farming of carnivorous species causes more overfishing and ecosystem strain and contributes nothing to food security.
(Yawn) and this is a terrific, good, not bad, conversion rate. Better than rabbit, broilers, pork and much better than "holy herbivorous cattle" beef. And the same food gave to a human would have a conversion rate of 10:0, because the stuff would never be approved as human-grade food.
But can be still feed to another animal and used to make excellent food. Octopus is a high quality human food, healthy and more expensive than the tasteless Tilapia or swimming-in-poo-nd carp for a reason. Iron scraps are cheaper than titanium also.
Maybe the problem could be that some people dislike octopus by "put random reason here" (religion, virtue signaling, fear to slimy creatures, not included in tyrolean tradition or classified as alien life form in Nuevo Mexico?...) and lobby to discourage its use as human food.
This people (at least many of them) are hypocritical. Most wouldn't have any problem saying that whereas munching their fried broiler chicken wings, made of young birds 100 days old. Most wouldn't have any ethical problem with the idea of killing and eating a delicious and pray-safe 20 days old lamb.
... but to eat a 3Yo adult octopus in the end of its life cycle (that will die by natural processes in a few months in any case)... this is unethical?. Nonsense
> If octopuses of some species can be kept together in moderate numbers and in larger enclosures with significant enrichment, this might mitigate some, though not all, of the welfare problems.
"Octopuses must be smart as chimps so they must be treated the same".
Wrong, they are solitary animals. All of the species fished. They tolerate other sexes only in reproduction and females could ignore other females (nesting at a safe distance) when taking care of its own nest.
From a young octopus to be in the same enclosure as another octopus mean only two things: dinner or imminent and stressful risk of death. To suggest that this would put more emotion in its sad lifes is like suggesting to improve the life of a zebra putting a lion in the same enclosure to play.
> Such efforts are occurring despite the fact that octopus farming has the same environmental consequences as other types of carnivorous aquaculture.
Consequences that include for example more small fishes using the area as nursery and sanctuary because there are not trawls anymore in the area. Or most ship noise and human activity concentrated now in a single point of the coast. The author suggests that all consequences are bad for biodiversity but this is false. Some are bad and other positive. Biodiversity around tuna enclosures is surprisingly high for example.
> And, like other carnivorous aquaculture, octopus farming would increase, not alleviate, pressure on wild aquatic animals
Same product. Indistinguisable taste. Two different prices. What the people will buy?
Pressure will increase in the same way as having a cheap alternative of phone will made everybody buy only the model of my-phone encrusted with diamonds. Why to eat cheap and available sheep meat all the year, when you could sell your house and eat wild himalayan blue sheep meat (only in november) instead?
Nine of each 10 sea breams that you can eat in your restaurant are domesticated, and you can find gilthead sea bream all the months of the year now, in all restaurants, because this fact.
I don't see how this is an inaccuracy in the article. The part just before your quote says octopus farming will be either uneconomical or we'll have to put each of them into a tiny solitary confinement cell, far from being species-appropriate. The article then leaves some escape hatch to be less absolutist, that you apparently didn't like. I don't see much of a problem with a sentence like that... after all, trained wolf's are used to guard sheep's. That comes quite close to your example.
Their place can be adjusted to its size. Tiny animals can be very comfortable sitting in tiny cages with all their sides protected.
To produce a Kg of cow meat you'll need to provide about ``X'' Kg of cow food with an economic value of ``Y'' dollars. Is useful to do logistics and make a guess of what could be your benefits and loses. Is more about economy than about ecology or energy flux.