My wife and I loved that.

That’s a tautological statement. We define words like sentient and sapient in terms of what we are.

Saying “this lifeform that we can’t communicate with in any meaningful way (for these purposes) has emotional or cognitive experiences that we would recognize as meeting those definitions” isn’t falsifiable and therefore isn’t science.

If at some point someone invents a human to mollusk translator so we can discuss our experiences, this topic can be revisited.

Until then words like “may” and “possible” should be used.