Two-Spot Octopus Video - Catalina Island 07-16-2006

[miket]

Finally...

I have been shooting underwater video for 4 years now. Until now, no good octopus footage, I had some, but it wasn't very colorful, was shot with my old rig, and is not widescreen.

This last Sunday at Catalina I got what I was waiting for.


2 Spot Octopus video, 48 seconds, WMV - 7mb

I was filming a Garibaldi up higher and looked down to see this Octopus crawling over the reef.

We saw at least 4 or 5 Octopus over the 3 dives we did, almost all of them at Ripper's Cove and Red Bluffs. We saw 6 or more Morays at these sites too. Vis was sucky (for Catalina) but we found so much stuff stuck inside the reef it didn't bother us too much. My Moray footage came out real cool too. A gallery of screen grabs from the raw video is here.

Enjoy the video...

- MikeT

 

[niuhi]

Sick vid. We play with a few two spot octos about everytime we are at Woods cove buggin at night. They are all over the place once you know how to look for them.

 

[Empty V]

Nice job Mike! What camera did you shoot on? Great compression too.

Billy

 

[miket]

Nice job Mike! What camera did you shoot on? Great compression too.

Billy

Thanks, it's a Pansonic GS-400 3CCD in an Ocean Images, Inc. Housing. Lighting is with two UK Light Cannons (with diffusors).

I used Windows Movie Maker to compress the video. Since it is so short I just cranked the quality up until the file size was 7mb.

- MikeT

 

[Empty V]

That Scythe Butterfly is incredible It looks like a cross between a heniochus and a longnose Butterfly. Crazy stuff! That can't be indigenous to California. Is this fish common in Catalina water?

Billy

 

[miket]

That Scythe Butterfly is incredible It looks like a cross between a heniochus and a longnose Butterfly. Crazy stuff! That can't be indigenous to California. Is this fish common in Catalina water?

Billy

They are not indigenous this far north. Native to Baja and south. It's really, really rare, I was lucky!

It was at the dive site "Rock Quarry". There are other sites on the island where they have been seen regularly too. They are really skittish.

- MikeT