I picked up The Soul of an Octopus because, ten years ago, I was utterly enamored with Sy Mongtomery’s The Good Good Pig. My expectations were so high that the contrast between what I learned about the inner lives of octopuses, and the Stockholm Syndromesque relationships between them and their keepers, quickly became too disappointing—and too tiring—for me to enjoy.
The subtitle “A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness” clearly states Montgomery’s purpose. And she starts her exploration off well enough. She’s meeting Athena, the New England Aquarium’s 40-pound, 2-1/2-year-old octopus for the first time. Montgomery is charmed. I’m charmed—for “those who work with octopuses report seeing things that, according to the way we’ve learned the world normally works, should not be happening.” Montgomery proceeds to eloquently make her case: octopuses are intelligent, emotional beings with distinct personalities and memory.
I was, therefore, surprised when Montgomery reveals that she hopes to acquire an octopus of her own. She feels a need to possess an animal that shares our deepest-felt emotions. It seems strange to me that one would make a case for the profound intelligence of something, and then feel the need to capture it, wrest it from its home, and imprison it in a barren tank in an otherwise uninhabitable and foreign place.
She goes on to share her deep love for Kali, a young octopus who lives in a dark, 50-gallon barrel at the New England Aquarium. The flower pot Montgomery has given her to hide in has been removed from her barrel for lack of space. It seems an odd way to keep an animal you claim to love, yet Montgomery never questions Athena’s living arrangements.
Leaving Kali confined to her 50-gallon barrel, Montgomery learns to scuba dive so that she can experience, and be in the actual ocean with, the octopuses she so admires. I am struck by the irony of needing to experience Kali’s home environment while simultaneously denying her that home. And Montogomery’s ignorance of this irony is astounding. She describes the ascent from her final dive: “I ascend with [Rob] slowly, like a dying soul reluctant to leave its body, and we watch the silver trail of our bubbles rising above us like shooting stars.” Is she not describing what Kali must have felt on her final ascent? Only, Kali’s emotions were certainly compounded by fear and desperation.
My entire reading of The Soul of an Octopus was fraught with frustration at the abuse, (with some situations reminiscent of the tragic escape scene at the end of Finding Nemo), and callous treatment of the animals in the aquarium staff’s care. In the end, they shrug their shoulders and sigh, “It’s the best we can do. After all, we’re only human.”
While I imagine Montgomery’s aim is to paint a portrait of herself and her aquarium colleagues as fighting the good conservation fight and educating the masses, their efforts put profit above kindness and come at great expense to the animals. For me, she has unwittingly lumped her book in the same category as the startling documentary Blackfish, an exposé on the lives of Orca whales kept in captivity.