dwashbur
Contributor
This guy wasn't more than 6" long from tip to tip while swimming. The fact that my daughter found him at all, out on the sand in about 14' of water at the Breakwater during our 8/29 night dive, is amazing. But what he did was so much more amazing I have to explain it in pictures.
We found him pretty much like this, though my daughter said when she first saw him it looked as though he was coming up out of a hole in the sand:
We studied him for a while, taking pictures and watching him change colors, change his shape and all the cool things that octopi do. Then he moved away and we followed. To our surprise, he stopped next to this bat star:
and to our utter amazement, started tucking himself UNDER it. I thought, "Okay, being eaten is preferrable to being out here with us?!?!?!?!"
Here's another angle as he continued to slide under the bat star. Oddly enough, he didn't seem to be in any distress, and the star didn't seem to be reacting:
So we figured, what the hey, let's take a look. We carefully moved the star just as the octo disappeared under it, and this is what we saw:
Seconds later, he vanished completely, leaving nothing but a hole in the sand. It was one of the most incredible things we've ever seen. We've seen Catalina Congers bury themselves, but we had no idea that any species of octopus did it.
Incidentally, does anybody know what kind of octo he is? He doesn't appear to be the basic red octopus, Octopus rubescens, because he doesn't have the "eyelashes" that characterize that one. But we can't tell what he is. Help would be appreciated.
Viz on this dive was so horrible we despaired of seeing anything good. This event sure turned that around!!!!!!!
We found him pretty much like this, though my daughter said when she first saw him it looked as though he was coming up out of a hole in the sand:
We studied him for a while, taking pictures and watching him change colors, change his shape and all the cool things that octopi do. Then he moved away and we followed. To our surprise, he stopped next to this bat star:
and to our utter amazement, started tucking himself UNDER it. I thought, "Okay, being eaten is preferrable to being out here with us?!?!?!?!"
Here's another angle as he continued to slide under the bat star. Oddly enough, he didn't seem to be in any distress, and the star didn't seem to be reacting:
So we figured, what the hey, let's take a look. We carefully moved the star just as the octo disappeared under it, and this is what we saw:
Seconds later, he vanished completely, leaving nothing but a hole in the sand. It was one of the most incredible things we've ever seen. We've seen Catalina Congers bury themselves, but we had no idea that any species of octopus did it.
Incidentally, does anybody know what kind of octo he is? He doesn't appear to be the basic red octopus, Octopus rubescens, because he doesn't have the "eyelashes" that characterize that one. But we can't tell what he is. Help would be appreciated.
Viz on this dive was so horrible we despaired of seeing anything good. This event sure turned that around!!!!!!!
