Octopus - up close and personal

I wanted to write a quick post about a topic I've written on before - octopus. In May, I wrote an entry about the intelligence of octopus (and I don't know about you, but some of what I learned certainly surprised me!). Well, my husband and I recently came home from a vacation in Hawaii. We both love to snorkel and scuba dive, and though we weren't able to do any scuba diving this trip, we did get in some great snorkeling. And this time we saw something we've never seen before while in the ocean - an octopus.

Now, we strongly suspect that there are octopus all over the areas where we often snorkel. The rocks and coral have so many cracks and fissures that there are ample hiding places for them. There are also significant numbers of moray eels in the area, and octopus are a tasty snack for a moray (if it can catch one, that is). And finally, we've heard other people say they've seen octopus around there before. So we knew that they were there. But we've never seen one before.

I think there are 2 main reasons for this. First, octopus are nocturnal, and we always snorkel during the day. And second, octopus are really, really, really good at hiding - especially when it comes to camouflage! An octopus sitting motionless in a crevice looks just like a rock - brown and bumpy. Put that "rock" 10 feet below the surface of the water, and a snorkeler swimming over the top of it will never see it.

However, this year we were extremely fortunate. We managed to see an octopus as it was moving to a new hidey-hole. It was fairly easy to see it when it was in motion; moreover, once it was settled into its new spot, we knew where to look for it, and were able to watch it quite easily. It was pretty big, maybe 2 feet long from the head to the tips of the arms, much longer than I ever expected to see in the wild. And perhaps the coolest thing about it was the way that it would rapidly change colors when one of us swam close to it. It would instantly switch from rock-brown to dark red, then fade back to brown when we backed off. I think that means we were spooking it a little bit!

We saw quite a few other interesting sea creatures while snorkeling this year, as well, including both the largest and the smallest moray eels we've ever seen (the largest being probably close to 4 feet long, and the smallest being only several inches), and a huge devil scorpionfish. This has to be one of the uglier fish I've ever seen. They sit on the bottom of the ocean, disguising themselves as rocks. They kind of look like a fishy equivalent of a gargoyle, actually - lumpy, brown, and extremely grumpy looking. And while you don't want to touch these guys (yes, they are poisonous), being able to find one is actually quite a treat. (Can you see the face of this one on the right-hand side of the picture, with a fin in the bottom left corner?)

I'm sure there were all kinds of interesting creatures in the ocean where we were snorkeling that we never even saw. But I think we were very fortunate to find the things that we did! Of course, the next time we go, I'll be on the lookout for even bigger and better things.