The initial army of 130,000 baby octopuses is just the start. As scientists breed more in the lab, more will be released into the sea.<\/p>\n
Alessio Mammi, who is in charge of agriculture and fisheries for Emilia-Romagna, said: \u201cThe blue crab is not just an invasive species, it represents one of the most serious crises to have hit our waters.\u201d<\/p>\n
In some areas, the crabs had destroyed 70 per cent of clam production, he said, adding: \u201cSaving the fishing sector is an urgent priority for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is not yet certain that the octopus army will be effective \u2013 not least because the hatchlings have a mortality rate of about 99 per cent.<\/p>\n
Experts insist they can still have a formidable impact.<\/p>\n
Dr Mordenti said:\u201cIf a single octopus eats a female blue crab, you need to remember that the crab could have produced 1.5 million eggs, even two million.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The initial army of 130,000 baby octopuses is just the start. As scientists breed more in the lab,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[257110,122661,844,61,60,102,20099,14994,82,1284,263,268],"class_list":["post-606610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-clams","tag-crabs","tag-fishing","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-italy","tag-mediterranean","tag-octopus","tag-science","tag-standard","tag-wildlife","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}