Tapas restaurants in tentacles of octopus shortage

Worldwide popularity of Hawaiian and Japanese cuisine and poor catches blamed for vast price rises

IT HAS long been one of Spain’s most beloved dishes: simple, succulent slices of spiced octopus enjoyed in tavernas and on seafront terraces from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.

But the growing worldwide popularity of Japanese, Spanish and Hawaiian cuisine is squeezing the octopus market, with soaring demand forcing up prices to double that of two years ago.

Poor catches have aggravated the situation, and in the northern Spanish community of Galicia, home of the famed octopus dish, it is in increasingly short supply.

The average market price of regularsized octopus in Galicia has risen from around £2.83 per lb to £5.66 per lb (€714 per kg), with larger specimens costing more. In the US even higher sums can be commanded.

“The price will rise even more,” said Carmen Torres Lorenzo, who for three decades has sold fish in Bueu market on the country’s Atlantic coast. “I wish a lot of octopus would appear... and the price will come down, but that won’t happen.”

Across Galicia, restaurateurs and grocers say they often run out of octopus early in the day, if they can get it at all. Some restaurants place stickers over previous menu prices to reflect the inexorable rises. Others report selling the seafood at a loss, wary of passing on the hikes.

The popularity of the Hawaiian poke bowl, a raw fish salad, is partly to blame, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which also cites increasing global consumption of Japanese food and tapas as boosting demand in global markets.

The soaring demand seems inversely proportional to recent catches, which have been poor, particularly in Morocco and Mauritania, where octopus is a major source of income. Fisheries are not yet able to farm octopuses, which reproduce by laying eggs on the ocean floor to be fertilised and transported by currents. Teams in Japan and Spain are working on ways to replicate the delicate process, but they are not yet ready for commercial production.

José Manuel Rosas, head of the fishing guild in Bueu, said rising prices were a help to the fishermen in the short term but there were fears that what was once a seafood staple was fast becoming a luxury dish.