Rise of the eight-legger! - a series of reports from the French coast.

In the fishing ports of southern Brittany, the proliferation of octopus worries Octopus seems to have proliferated in southern Brittany since the summer of 2021. Fishermen from Lorient and Quiberon in Morbihan see this every day. Explanations.

Breton fishermen bring up more and more octopus in their traps. A proliferation that worries the profession and scientists.

Southern Brittany has seen more and more octopus in recent months. At the Lorient and Quiberon auctions in Morbihan, these molluscs are increasingly filling the seafood bins. The octopus occasionally offers new outlets to fishermen, but it upsets the local ecosystem and the biomass.

Read also: From Saint-Malo to Cancale: octopus alert on the coasts 

The first affected, the fishermen 

The phenomenon of octopuses or common octopuses ( Octopus vulgaris ) is visible on fishing returns. “It is a species that has appeared massively in recent times. We have seen a lot of them since July 2021 at the Lorient fish auction,” says Yonel Madec, director of the Lorient fish auction.

In Quiberon , same story. On a Friday in November 2021, at the auction, there were 19 tonnes of octopus… out of 23 tonnes of products. Octopus occasionally became the first species at the top of sales in Morbihan auctions.

The French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer) in Lorient corroborates this recent proliferation: “In the spring of 2021, we started to see a lot of them. It exploded in the summer.

A fishery that has been able to delight fishermen with large quantities of molluscs (from 6-8 euros per kilo) but which has consequences on the resource.

For Yonel Madec from the Lorient fish auction, we do not yet "know the repercussions on our local ecosystem" but we think that octopus is already harmful:

Octopuses have contributed to endangering certain species such as the scallop shell in Quiberon and the Glénans. This caused the lobsters and crabs to move. 

The octopus is a predator. 

Lionel Pawlowski from Ifremer had the bitter experience of this during a dive:

During a dive in Groix in 2021, I saw more dead shells than live scallops. I came across an octopus that was eating the inside of the shell. The octopus hunts in the rock in “umbrella” mode. It surrounds the rock with its tentacles and captures small crustaceans.

A link with global warming?

The common octopus is present in Breton waters. Could its proliferation be linked to the warming of the water? Fishermen and scientists agree that we have to wait.

“These are populations that fluctuate enormously. We are in a period of high abundance. These are animals that do not live very long: 18 months to 3 years, “ says Ifremer Lorient. “The octopus had almost disappeared in the 1960s after a cold summer. […] Scientific articles show that reproduction is favored when the water is warmer 

Could the last hot summers have stimulated reproduction? asks Lionel Pawlowski. The marine environment specialist recalls that in the Bay of Biscay, “it has been observed that the temperature increases by 0.3°C per decade. » “For now, there is no real answer. To say that there is cause and effect with global warming would be a shortcut”, also tempers Yonel Madec. The phenomenon of octopus proliferation remains closely watched by scientists.

Some French fishermen have adopted the millennia-old method of using ceramic pots to fish for octopus.

Tunisian fishermen use a similar technique

Many fishermen also use lures to catch octopus in the same way they catch squid of cuttlefish.


Public consultation - octopus fishing in Brittany

Draft decree approving the deliberation of the CRPMEM of Brittany setting the conditions for octopus fishing in the territorial waters located off the Brittany region

This consultation, within the framework of the draft deliberation of the Regional Committee for Maritime Fisheries and Marine Farming of Brittany approved by this draft decree, aims to establish a framework for octopus fishing in territorial waters off the coast of the region. Brittany.

The "OCTOPUS FISHING IN BRITTANY" deliberation provides for a framework for the fishing of octopus and edones, Octopus vulgaris and Eledone cirrhosa, in the territorial waters off the Brittany region. To simplify the reading of this note and the draft text, the generic term "Octopus" is retained below.

Currently, octopus fishing is not subject to specific regulations in Breton territorial waters. The only existing measure is set by Regulation 2019/1241 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on the conservation of fishery resources and the protection of marine ecosystems by technical measures, and sets the minimum conservation reference weight octopus ( Octopus vulgaris ) at 750 grams.

However, since the year 2021, a phenomenon of massive proliferation of octopuses and edones has been observed in the north of the Bay of Biscay. In 2021, around 3,400 tonnes were recorded in the northern Bay of Biscay by Ifremer, compared to volumes around 200 tonnes in previous years.

Since 2021, prices have remained high and the markets are in demand, generating a strong appeal for the species and a significant targeted fishing effort, particularly in certain areas of southern Brittany.

This phenomenon, coupled with the absence of regulations, has led to a major change in fishing practices in the sectors most affected to date: Belle Ile and Les Glénan. The rapid expansion of the range of these species also raises fears of changes in practices in more northern sectors in the medium term.

Thus, in the first place, a large number of vessels already equipped with shellfish pots or traps have started to target octopus and change their fishing area. At the same time, new ships arrived to target it, in particular by trawl or trap for ships that had not previously practiced this profession. Many ships have also equipped themselves with “octopus boards” (related LTL gear), a new activity in the territorial waters off Brittany.

All of these changes in practices have caused major problems of cohabitation in two specific sectors in 2021, in particular from September, a period when the proliferation phenomenon has increased:

Off southern Finistère, in the Glénan sector. Off Morbihan, in the Belle Ile sector. The strong presence of octopus from the start of 2022 did not make it possible to alleviate these problems and raises fears of an increase in their magnitude from September 2022.

Consequently, the office of the CRPMEM of Brittany asked to initiate work, in connection with the Departmental Committees of Maritime Fisheries and Marine Breeding (CDPMEM), relating to the supervision of the fishery and the acquisition of knowledge (on the species and on the impacts for fishing activities).

At the request of professionals operating in the sectors mainly affected by this phenomenon, the CDPMEMs of Morbihan and Finistère have organized cohabitation meetings in order to find suitable solutions for all ships. These meetings brought out the need to limit the number of devices allowing to target octopus on these two sectors, but also outside these perimeters in order not to create a new postponement of activity.

At the same time, two internships started in April 2022 in order to analyze in detail the number of vessels, the gear used and the sectors concerned (conducting activity surveys according to the Valpena methodology), then to identify the impact of these changes in activity on the fleets of each department.

This draft deliberation of the CRPMEM Bretagne approved by this draft decree therefore has the main objective of setting an initial framework that currently does not exist and then of referring to a sectoral decision-making system a certain number of elements that can be applied locally. The articulation between the deliberation and the sectoral decisions will allow:

To define sectors subject to strong problems of cohabitation locally, and to apply specific rules to them according to the context; To take more restrictive measures than those fixed by deliberation. The construction of the draft text was carried out in order to take into account all the fisheries already established in Brittany and likely to fish octopus, and in such a way as not to call into question the balances already in place on the various trap professions and in particular those of large crustaceans (lobster, lobsters, spiders, cakes).

This draft text was presented and discussed during the “Coastal fishing” working group which was held on Friday June 10, 2022 and which issued a favorable opinion.*