This octopus, along with about 250 others, lives in captivity as part of a community project in Sisal, a fishing community in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, that started 15 years ago as a women’s collective.

With guidance from Rosas, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the small octopus farm developed a patented food for the highly intelligent cephalopods. The farm expanded, now employing older fishermen and their wives, offering a way to earn money back on land when the grueling work at sea becomes too much.