I don't play with a Giant Pacific Octopus because you never know how things could turn out. The divers that shot that video got lucky that the animal did not ended up probing them further to their masks or regulators or come out from its den. They took their chances, I guess.
Every time you go diving you take your chances. Some of the people in that video have been interacting with octopus for years ... some pretty amazing interactions, actually ... and sometimes they do get a mask or reg pulled off. But to my knowledge, neither the animals nor the divers have ever been injured by it. And frankly, these are some of the most environmentally consciencious divers I know.
Ironically ... or perhaps not ... these same divers often decide not to visit a certain den because too many divers are "loving them to death" ... you don't have to touch an animal to stress it out, and if you don't know how to approach it you will often be perceived as a predator. Pay attention to how the animal reacts to you. If it recoils, or in the case of a GPO, if it turns white, leave it alone! On the other hand, if it reaches a tentacle out and starts feeling your person, it's trying to figure out what you are ... probably looking for food. Let it do the probing ... don't grab or pull. Speaking of food ... what I really object to is people who bring food down for the critters. You shouldn't feed them ... they're capable of finding their own, and human feeding does change their behavior ... sometimes in disturbing ways. It's especially disturbing when people feed them stuff like hot dogs. My goodness ... leave those things for the barbeque or baseball game.
I used to volunteer at the local aquarium where in some pools visitors are allowed to touch all the invertebrates but not the fish because, for those you don't know it already, their skins is covered with a mucus that protect them from getting sick. Now I watched the divers feeding the wolf eels and they did not seem to have a problem in stroking them like they were cats. So now I am kind of confused...Does the wolf eel not have that mucous after all? Or is it a tougher fish that can cope with less mucus on its skin? Ma!
You volunteered at the aquarium ... think about it ... how do you suppose those animals got there? Certainly nobody "talked" them into going. They were captured. And in the case of octopus, that capture involved some pretty intensive handling.
As for animals like wolfies and octos, think about where they live. They're constantly cramming their bodies inside of holes in the rocks. If they were so fragile, don't you suppose they'd be scraping mucus off on those rocks when they stuffed themselves into a hole that's smaller than their body?
I've had wolfies and octos wrap themselves around my body before ... they don't seem terribly concerned about the contact. Sometimes I am ... but they don't seem terribly concerned about what I think either.
If YOU don't want to touch, then don't. I'll respect your choice. But please don't think you have a right to impose your choices on others ... especially those with many times your knowledge and experience. The people in that video have been interacting with and photographing marine animals since years before you ever thought about scuba diving. Maybe ... just maybe ... they know what they're doing.
BTW - ever watch a Jacques Cousteau video? I suppose you would have wanted to put him out of business too ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
I felt and still feel the action was justified. I picked up the urchin took it to a diver who thought it was appropriate to feed urchins to other critters and got her to hold it in her hand... her eyes got very big when she felt it moving around in her hand! She had never thought of the urchin as a living creature she was killing by breaking it up with her knife. She NEVER killed another Urchin and that one was put back where it came from.
are you POSITIVE you aren't stressing them or effecting their eyesight long enough to make them more susceptible to their predators?:shocked2:
