I saw this petition elsewhere and signed up immediately. Octopuses are my favourite animal. They fascinate me, and have done ever since I read about one in an aquarium who would creep out of its tank at night, snack on the other fish and climb back into its tank. Any creature that could be so sneaky was clearly intelligent.
Since then, I have read more about them and watched a few documentaries, including the lovely My Octopus Teacher. My interest in them has grown and it seems to me that they are the closest we'll ever get to meeting aliens - beings whose bodies seem strange to us and whose brains have developed differently from ours and yet show definite signs of intelligence, such as problem-solving. One thing that fascinates me is their apparent ability to act emotionally. They have been observed to punch fish for no apparent reason other than spite, and I have read about octopuses in aquariums deliberately squirting water at workers they disliked. In one case, the worker left because she had a job in another city but when she came back on a visit the octopus immediately drenched her. It had remembered her although it hadn't seen her for months, and it knew it didn't like her.
To treat these intelligent, sensitive creatures so brutally is unthinkable. I hope the petition is successful.