Sep 11, 2026 · 53 min · 11 segments
Cornish fishermen this summer have had their usual catch of lobster and crab replaced by voracious octopus. Restaurant menus have had to be wiped and rewritten across the south-west, but what else has…
Helen CzerskiHost
Keith HiscockGuest
Amy CourtneyGuest
Tom HeapHost
Sy MontgomeryGuest
If it were land, if, say, aardvark started roaming around wild in Derbyshire, we'd start to notice pretty quickly.
And it was people in the fishing industry who first flagged this octopus influx up, wasn't it, Keith?
Divers in certain parts of the country, particularly down in Cornwall, started to see large numbers of octopus, and one of the hotspots is at Porthkerrys on the Lizard in Cornwall.
And, uh, the out- latest update on that is they see as many as 15 octopus in one dive.
But the fishermen, yes, all of a sudden their pots started to come up full of not live shellfish, but octopus and lots of dead shellfish.
So the octopus are in... have found out where dinner is, and they've gone after it-
And, you know, you can get a lobster pot absolutely full of, let's say, a dozen, even 15 octopus, who just like to go in there and, uh, use it as a place-
So unlike crabs and lobsters, the pot traps them, the octopus can go in and out 'cause they worked it out presumably.
They're choosing to be in the lobster pot, which might not be a good strategy because the fishing industry, although it has had fewer crabs, it hasn't all been bad news, as our producer Beth Saggar-Fenton found out at Cornwall's busiest harbor.
If it were land, if, say, aardvark started roaming around wild in Derbyshire, we'd start to notice pretty quickly.
And it was people in the fishing industry who first flagged this octopus influx up, wasn't it, Keith?
Divers in certain parts of the country, particularly down in Cornwall, started to see large numbers of octopus, and one of the hotspots is at Porthkerrys on the Lizard in Cornwall.
And, uh, the out- latest update on that is they see as many as 15 octopus in one dive.
But the fishermen, yes, all of a sudden their pots started to come up full of not live shellfish, but octopus and lots of dead shellfish.
So the octopus are in... have found out where dinner is, and they've gone after it-
And, you know, you can get a lobster pot absolutely full of, let's say, a dozen, even 15 octopus, who just like to go in there and, uh, use it as a place-
So unlike crabs and lobsters, the pot traps them, the octopus can go in and out 'cause they worked it out presumably.
They're choosing to be in the lobster pot, which might not be a good strategy because the fishing industry, although it has had fewer crabs, it hasn't all been bad news, as our producer Beth Saggar-Fenton found out at Cornwall's busiest harbor.
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