Earlier this week, a fish market owner purchased a giant octopus from the fish market so that he could set it free. Giovanni DeGarimore is the owner of Giovanni’s Fish market in California. He received a phone call from a local fisherman who accidentally captured a giant octopus in one of his crab traps. He didn’t want the octopus to be slaughtered so he bought the sea creature from the fisherman and set it free.
DeGarimore sells fresh seafood from his market, but he says that the octopus is a different animal because of its intelligence. He says that he considers it different from the fish, crabs, and shrimp that he sells at his shop every day. When the dock manager called to say that a local crab fisherman was selling a 70-pound octopus, he knew he had to do something. He didn’t want to financially reward the capture of the octopus, but he couldn’t bear the thought of the “beautiful animal” being killed for the market. So he paid the fisherman a few hundred dollars for the octopus. He even named it Fred.
“Meet Fred. He’s a 70 Pound Octopus that Gio bought from a fisherman yesterday with the sole intention of releasing him back into the wild,” the fish market wrote on Facebook. “As you may or may not know, Gio has taken a moral position to no longer support the sales of ANY Octopus products. While it might seem strange, we think it’s actually pretty cool. Stay tuned to follow Fred’s release back into the wild.”
Later that day, DeGarimore said he released the octopus in a place that was well away from fisherman and also away from its natural predators such as sea lions.