The octopus (Octopus vulgaris) is disappearing from the seafront on the Costa Brava in Girona.
Small-scale fishermen warn that their catches, between 10 and 15 meters deep, have been disappearing for five years.
Despite the uncertainty that exists on the subject, experts believe that factors such as saturated beaches, increased water temperatures, lack of organic matter due to sewage treatment plants and polluted waters have caused this coastal cephalopod mollusk to migrate out to sea.
This year its biological ban has been extended to the entire coastline to allow the sustainability of fishing in the coming campaigns.
In addition, a project has been launched to make a diagnosis of the octopus populations in the gulfs of Roses and Pals.
Historically, octopuses abounded in the meadows of seagrass (Cymodocea nodosa) in Roses and Pals.
Today it is not like that.
Biologist Boris Weitzmann warns that fishermen warn of its "drastic decrease".
This has motivated the Pop de Gram project to find out "in what situation its population is, what its diet is, its reproduction habits and what food availability it finds in these meadows", Weitzmann details.
Local artisanal fishermen and biologists have installed two 500-meter-long ropes 15 meters from the bottom of both gulfs with 25 alcatruces (artisanal pots) – which serve as a refuge for octopuses – attached with an anchor.
The biologists dive once a month and analyze the remains of food and the occupation of the pots.
In August only 10 of the 50 were occupied, nine this September.
The project, which will draw its first conclusions in October and could become a pilot test to plan a deeper octopus refuge, is promoted by the Alive Foundation for the conservation of the marine environment, and the Grup d'Acció Local Pesquera (GALP Costa brave).
In Catalonia, since 2018, two octopus shellfish co-management committees have been set up.
The General Directorate of Maritime Policy this year has approved for the first time a ban under biological criteria of at least two months throughout Catalonia.
The fundamental characteristic of this closed season is that it is located in the months in which the females -with only one laying period in their short life of just over a year- are in the reproductive phase, which should allow them to set eggs and guarantee the sustainability of fishing for future campaigns.
In the Cap de Creus Natural Park and the Bay of Cadaqués, for greater protection, the ban is from July to September and affects professional and recreational fishermen.
The Head of Marine Resources of the Generalitat, Jordi Rodón, believes that, despite the "ignorance" of the octopus -of which there were no previous studies to the management committees- "it is moving" due to factors such as the warming of the water or the human interaction.
He also attributes the decrease in catches "to the fact that since 2000 the small gear fleet has dropped by 56%" and trusts the results of the ban because "the fishermen are very involved."
The technical director of the Alive Foundation, Sonia Duñac, indicates that before in the Bay of Roses you could catch kilos of coquinas (one of the bivalves that feed the octopus) and currently there are none.
"The octopus does not find its food and looks for it, just like its comfort temperature," she says.
Rodón is clear: “Where the octopus was, now we are”.
The Mediterranean has reached 30 degrees.
According to the amateur meteorologist from l'Estartit, Josep Pascual - who has collected the temperature in the Medes Islands since 1974 - since 2000 the mercury has risen between 3 and 4 degrees.
The temperature affects the hatching of the eggs -if the water is warmer they take longer to hatch- and their metabolism, which grows more slowly.
Jordi Fulcarà, the patron saint of Llançà, the Girona brotherhood that has historically caught the most octopus, with 65,881 kilos in 2017 and 41,956 in 2022, affirms that after twelve years fishing for octopus, he knows that the animal “goes where it feels comfortable with the temperature, at Little depth can be between December and January but when it warms up it goes to depths of 50 meters or more”.
"In 2014 we caught it inside the bays, in two or three years whoever wants to fish it at ten meters throughout the year will not catch a single one," he says.
"We follow them and they at the water temperature, almost the whole year they are between 30 and 50 meters, we know it because our wages were going and we had to meet him," he confesses.
Duñac, like Rodón, warns: "The bivalves that the octopus feeds on are filter feeders and if there is contamination and there is no organic matter they will not be able to eat and will disappear, as has already happened in the bays of the Costa Brava."
You can follow EL PAÍS Catalunya on
and
, or sign up here to receive
our weekly newsletter
Subscribe to continue reading
read without limits
Keep reading
I'm already a subscriber