A thieving two-spot octopus

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Merry

Contributor
Messages
335
Reaction score
864
Location
Torrance, California
# of dives
1000 - 2499
The opportunity to witness and photograph marine life behavior can be rare. Even then, the behavior may be either mundane or over with before you can get a camera on it. But yesterday, a determined little octopus put on quite a show. It was so unexpected that most of the time, all I could do was watch, laugh, and marvel.


Visibility was so bad at Haggarty's Crane that we had to run a reel about 20 feet from the anchor to the crane. At some point, I snagged the line with my fin, and it dropped to the seafloor. No biggie, so I set about photographing something on a rock. Moments later, this two-spot octopus burst, yes, burst from its hole and glommed onto the bolt-snap of my reel. In a blink, it dragged as much of the contraption into its den as it could.


After I gently retrieved the reel, the octo went after it again! Since my presence didn't daunt its efforts, I brought Phil over for a look at my active little friend.


Two-spotoctopusbright800bDSC_8672_zps933773ae.jpg




Two-spotoctopusreelDSC_8668_zpsa67d3e6f.jpg




One of the crane's resident moray eels offering to be cleaned. Many of the cleaner shrimp were in the hole down around his tail.
MorayeelCraneDSC_8704_zps7c76e1a2.jpg




Blue-banded goby hanging around the eel's home.
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On Golf Ball Reef, Phil showed me a less than eyelash-size Doto amyra. I was barely able to get this beautiful nudibranch using a 105 mm lens and subsee +10 diopter. Wish it grew a tad larger here.
DotoamyraDSC_8781_zps3ade4696.jpg
 
Stunning little Doto! Dig the Moray as well. Love the Octopus story :)
 
Octopuses are just fabulous. I love the red spots on this one!
 
You guys are like a TV show. Hilarious! (and beautiful pics)
 
Awesome pics of the playful octopus.

I enticed one to extend a tentacle to touch my finger once but that was it.
 
I've heard from other divers that they will sometimes grab a beer can and use it to block their hole to protect them from predators. They often do that with wavy top snail shells. And then there's the one that grabbed my buddy's GoPro and wanted to take pictures of us!
 
I was playing in the tide pools one day when I caught little crab. Before I could get a closer look it pinched me, so I dropped it. It happen to fall into one of the tide pools close to the edge. Out came an octopus arm from a crevice in the wall of the tide pool, grabbed the crab as he floated towards the bottom. It all happened in a flash. Amazing little guys.
 
The octopus here (the Azores) are sneaky little buggers as well. I've been photographing one before and in the middle of changing some settings didn't notice that he'd stretched out an arm and grabbed onto one of my strobe arms. I laughed and took a picture which startled him into letting go but just a few seconds later he was back at it again grabbing everything he could. At one point I just let go to see what he would do as he tried to pull my S95 +strobes setup into the small hole he was living in. Gotta love the little guys...


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https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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