For a wild octopus yearning to stretch her arms beyond impassable blades of Astroturf and glide off into the depths of the Pacific, any farm is a factory farm. And by positing itself as an octo-friend, a champion of the seas, an environmental savior, Hawaii's octopus farm obscures its role in building this new industrial machine and setting us on an uncharted course we can’t ever come back from.
If you got a COVID vaccine, or any vaccine—or really any medical intervention over the past several decades—you can be sure that the blue blood of 450-million-year-old prehistoric arthropods known as horseshoe crabs was used to keep you safe. But in the U.S., lurking behind this magic potion is a fragile industry stubbornly dependent upon the traumatic bloodletting of a vulnerable species, compounded by a sea of red tape thwarting the widespread adoption of a viable alternative.
