By Richard Darwin
Though closer to Africa than to mainland Spain, the Canary Islands and surrounding Atlantic Ocean realm, constitute the Southernmost part of the Spanish territories. The Canary Island zone, due to its volcanic composition, offers a unique biosphere, which is unusually high in sodium. This area is thus considered to be amid the earth's biologically rich thermal waters. In fact, Spain is the second most biodiverse country in Europe, after Italy. With 7,150 marine species, the Canary islands, though distant, is a major bio hotspot within Spain, with many unique species.
Nueva Pescanova (NP) is Spain’s global seafood company. Its planned octopus farm, on Gran Canaria, the largest island of the Canary Islands, is anything but a solution to the damning problems in the biozone that it is centrally involved in creating. In fact, it would have calamitous repercussions for the already stressed local environment, without even considering the fish and crustaceans required to feed a million octopus a year for industrial farming.
Alarmingly, there are species that could be potentially threatened by the opening of the Gran Canaria farming of octopuses, including numerous species of fish like cartilaginous fish or vulnerable smooth hammerhead sharks, spinney dogfish, and Rough tail and Common Stingrays, as well as endangered common smooth-hound and basking sharks and Spiny butterfly rays. Critically endangered species include angel sharks and bull rays. Other regional fish species populations such as Black Moray eels, white sea bream, crevalle jack fish, red scorpionfish, Brito's goby, and rock-pool blenny fish, all of whom, though in decline, are listed by The International Union for Conservation of Nature as being of “least concern,” along with “vulnerable” status grey triggerfish and island comb groupers.
The Canary Islands waters are home to many species of invertebrates, some of whom are endemic to the regions. There are also sea sponges, jellyfishes, ghost, and other anemones, lime urchins, Mediterranean sea cucumbers, Canarian, and other Sea Stars and corals, including red gorgonian, and distinctive species of black coral.
The proposed octopus farm also poses risks to over 300 different species of crustaceans, including marine lobsters, crabs, shrimps, prawns, and barnacles, with one of the world's highest rates of decapod endemism. These threatened waters are also home to 498 species of mollusks. Moreover, around the Canary Islands, there are five different species of sea turtles found around the islands, namely vulnerable loggerhead and leatherback sea turtles, endangered green sea turtles and critically endangered hawksbill and Kemp's ridley sea turtles.
There are also many cetacean species found in the zone. There's 12 Delphinidae family cetaceans, all of whom bear the “near threatened” False Killer Whale, are classed as “least Concern.” There's 1 Procyonidae family Harbor Porpoises, though only classed as being of “least Concern” internationally, are in Europe listed as “vulnerable.” There are a further 16 species of true whales, including “near threatened” Northern bottlenose whales, “vulnerable” sperm and fin whales,” endangered” Blue and Sei whales and “critically endangered” North Atlantic right whales. There are a further seven species of pinnipeds, including “vulnerable” hooded seals. Sea plants who could be put at heightened risk include Cystoseira, a protected species of algae. The majority of the 394 species of birds found on the Canary islands are sea or shore birds including sandpipers, curlews, godwits, pratincoles, jaegers, skuas, auks, puffins, gulls, terns, tropic birds, storm, and “true petrels” shearwater birds, gannets, boobies and cormorants, all of whom rely on the ocean to survive.
As much of an ocean paradise as the Canary islands are, this is not an unspoiled bio hotspot. Being part of Spain nearest to Africa, it is also the region most severely affected by global warming. Sea level and temperatures in the region are rising at a frightening rate. The island, according to “Summary Report 2017-2021 of Risk assessment against climate change on the coasts of the Canary Islands,” prepared by the mapping & data research group Grafcan, presented to the “Journal of Marine Science & Engineering by the Institute of Oceanography and Global Change," found that sea levels in the Island region had risen by 7.94cm in the preceding 27 years. The authors predict that 2050 sea levels will have risen by 18.1 cm, with ocean waters claiming back many of the island group's tourist drawing beaches, with no less than 140 km's of coastline being pinpointed as being at high risk of flooding, if not vanishing altogether. From the period from 1979 to 2021, a mean average annual increase of 0.7° C and a decrease in precipitation from 251 mm to 217 mm. The Grafcan report predicts that these ongoing increases in temperature and drops in precipitation, are set to continue. A different study found that in the period from 1982 to 2013, there had been a mean Sea Surface Temperature warming trend of 0.28°C per decade. The warmer water becomes, the less oxygen there is.
Rising water temperatures of global origin and dimensions are not the only substantial threat to the Canary island biozone. Before the proposed Gran Canaria octopus farm, the activities of the existing 23 aquafarms on the Canary islands are already the cause of major environmental concern. Local ocean life is in decline due to discharge contamination from the existent farms and because of heavy extraction rates of fish and other sea life, especially through trawler fishing. Spain’s Neuva Pescanova operates huge island fish farms and bears incomparably greater responsibility for the catastrophic consequences in the region.
The Decline Of The Oceans
Nueva Pescanova’s egregious self-promoting as being an environmentally sustainable and responsible corporation couldn’t be further from the truth. With its unethical status in the seafood industry, NP has somehow astonishingly been celebrated, even being listed on the Seafood Stewardship Index as "the most sustainable and responsible fishing company in Spain and the second in the global seafood sector." The company’s Website claims that NP is committed to “maintaining biodiversity,” “protecting the ecosystem” and “promoting the circular economy. while these stared objectives run contrary to, and are incompatible with, the firm's own actions. Ocean and sea life is under threat throughout the world. The WWF Living Blue Planet Report found that over the last four decades, sea fish populations have declined on average by 50%. Some species extracted for consumption including tunas, mackerels, and bonitos, have declined by a full 74%.
The WWF report states that the principal reasons for this decline are a global rise in water temperatures and increasing acidity levels sparked by ever higher percentages of carbon dioxide in the oceans. The primary threat, though, is extraction overexploitation. These issues are especially severe in the Mediterranean, where according to the WWF, 93% of fish populations are assessed as being overexploited, as opposed 29% globally. Declines are especially acute in Spanish waters. In 2021, the NGO Oceana Europe released research that highlighted sea floor trawler fishing to be a major threat taking an especially high toll. Their data indicates the trawling exploitation is almost 8.74 times more intensive than average rates in European waters. While NP is the most significant contributor to the overexploitation of fish in the region, simultaneously seeking to expand its fishing grounds, the firm proposes that “the proliferation of its aquafarms will reduce pressure on ocean populations.” Aquafarms rely on live species fresh from oceans to feed their exploited marine life, whom NP sees as its product. Aquafarms are notoriously harmful to surrounding bodies of water because of the constant flow of exchange of pathogen-laden waters of aquafarms back into the ocean.
The Local Government Block On The Gran Canaria farm
Though it is not implemented as it should be, Spain’s Natural Heritage and Biodiversity Act, 2007, which, in theory, fully implements the EU’s 1992 Habitats Directive to place an onus on the preservation of the integrity of biodiversity hotspot ecosystems, including zones which "are essential for breeding, feeding, and sheltering marine species." The reason why NP has not yet opened its proposed Gran Canaria octopus battery farm is that its plans have not been approved by the local government. Good practice guidelines don't legally bind as such, but they aim to prescribe "minimum standards" and to "ensure the quality and integrity within a business practice. The way they work is like the highway code, in that failure to adhere can be used to demonstrate a "breach of care"—legally indicative of malpractice. Before opening an aquafarm, "baseline measurements" should be made, both for purposes of proper evaluation before a project is approved and subsequent comparative analysis of actual, as opposed to theoretical projection, of real-world damage done, once a facility is up and running. These tests consist of various intermittent water composition studies, with percentile readings of "dissolved inorganic and organic materials, other particles and atmospheric gases.” There should be an in-depth Ichthyologic evaluation of "fish stati,” with a local population detail: a comprehensive environmental impact projection study and 2 benthic study. To quote the science network site definition, "benthic infauna is the assemblage of organisms living within the seafloor, while the benthic epifauna is those living on or attached to the seafloor." A basic benthic study is based on random surface sampling, while a benthic core study is more thorough and focused on a specific, limited zone on the ocean floor.
NP's proposed octopus farm has not been approved due to environmental concerns. The information reports submitted for approval have been rejected, as assessment data has been deemed to be insufficient, and its plan is regarded as potentially reckless. Maria Angeles López Lax, an attorney working with the NGO Legal Natura, explains "NP’s environmental report was inadequate, lacking basic information to allow the Government to assess the impact of the farm on the environment and public health. It’s up to the company to prove that the farm would not impact on protected species or risk public health before permission can be granted, yet the company has failed to address even the most basic of these concerns.”
NP has issued numerous public statements minimizing the environmental impact this planned Port of Las Palmas, Gran Canaria farm, is likely to have on the immediately surrounding ecosphere. While simultaneously expanding its own fishing grounds, the firm claims that "our octopus aquaculture project is necessary to protect a species of great environmental and human value,” and its other aquafarms ventures will reduce extraction pressure on the ocean. With the octopus farm, NP has even gone so far as to claim in the long term that extra octopuses bred at the facility, not destined for the dinner table, will be used to boost numbers of declining wild populations. In its many decades of farming fish and crustaceans, species which are also in decline, NP has yet to release any counterbalance to the damage rendered by its own fishing fleets.
The only way this short-term profiteering on the arms of octopuses and marine life stops is to put pressure on the Gran Canaria government to deny all applications and attempts to grant octopus farming.
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