A city in Mauritania lives by catching octopuses. A town in the north of Spain processes the tentacles. It ends up on the tables in the European Union and Japan. This investigative journalism project charts the worldwide trade in octopus and explores overfishing of the animal, said to be so clever it can dream and feel pain.

This project was done in collaboration with Tristen Taylor, Nathalie Bertrams, Ching-Lee Tor and Salem Abu Bakr in Spain, Japan and Mauritania.

Funded by: Fonds Bijzondere Journalistieke Projecten and Pulitzer Center for Crisis reporting. Published in Vreme (Serbia), Suddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), De Groene Amsterdammer (Netherlands, forthcoming).