lb. (180 kg). While they do live in wrecks, they donât attack or kill divers.
Once while diving on the wreck of the clipper ship
Warhawk
in Discovery Bay off Puget Sound, I saw the greatest number of giant Pacific octopuses Iâd ever seen on one dive. This full-rigged sailing ship caught fire and went down in 1883, and all that remained were the skeletal ribs of the shipâs starboard side protruding from the sand bottom and 100-ft.-long (30-m-long) pile of ballast rocks next to the ribs. Eight giant Pacific octopuses were living in the ballast pile, perhaps because there was little else to make a den out of nearby in the bay, only vast expanses of sand and mud. These octopuses made dens where they could, even though they were closer to each other than they would have liked. Instead of just a home, this was an octopus condominium.
âRoland C. Anderson
Octopuses make their dens in many other human-donated items. Common octopuses of the Mediterranean Sea live inside ancient amphorae, sometimes all that is left of sunken Roman galleons on the sea floor. In the northeastern Pacific, the little red octopus may move into garbage on the sea floor. A female red octopus trawled up from the Friday Harbor area, in Washingtonâs San Juan Islands, was living in an old shoe. This was a female with eggs, so she was quickly named Mother Hubbard by the college class that found her.
Roland once found a giant Pacific octopus living in and blocking the active outfall of a sewer pipe in Tacoma, and a retired professional diver reported seeing several giant Pacific octopuses inside the boat locks between Lake Washington and Puget Sound during routine cleanings of the locks. Octopuses are frequently caught in crab traps in the North Pacific and in lobster pots in other parts of the world. They donât intend to use the traps as dens, but on their foraging expeditions they frequently pause in a temporary minimal shelter to quickly eat whatever prey theyâve caught, rather than take it home to eat it. And so a crab or lobster trap can become a snacking stop, replete with a handy supply of food. Unfortunately for the octopus, the trap is sometimes lifted to the surface before the animal has finished its snack and moved on. The octopus may then be used as bait for future catches.
Our trash can be useful for supporting octopus populations. On a recent scuba dive in Puget Sound, Roland saw eight beer bottles littering the bottom, and each had a small red octopus in it. Since the beer bottles at that dive site had 100 percent occupancy, the animals were utilizing a new resource. There was very little else for them to hide in other than a few large snail shells that were already occupied by hermit crabs, so lack of suitable dens could have stopped them from living there. Our trash may be increasing the range of this octopus to include areas that have no natural den sites. Secure in its beer bottle home, the animal is temporarily safe from predators. Ironically, the species may lately be facing a housing shortage. Environmental societies in coastal areas are cleaning up trash from public beaches, and as part of these cleanups scuba divers are picking up underwater trash, including beer bottles and cans.
The phenomenon of octopuses living in our beer bottle trash has been useful to researchers. Janet Voight did population studies in 1988 on Diguetâs pygmy octopus (Octopus digueti), which normally live in shells on intertidal sand flats in the northern Gulf of California. Strings of beer bottleswere set out at low tide and monitored for a year. The octopuses captured in this manner were not harmed as they are by other methods such as trawling, dredging, or noxious chemicals squirted into their dens. Dark beer bottles with narrow necks, tapering to an opening less than 1 in. (25 mm) wide, were used. About 14 percent of the bottles examined were occupied by the octopuses.
We have found that red octopuses in Puget Sound
Once while diving on the wreck of the clipper ship
Warhawk
in Discovery Bay off Puget Sound, I saw the greatest number of giant Pacific octopuses Iâd ever seen on one dive. This full-rigged sailing ship caught fire and went down in 1883, and all that remained were the skeletal ribs of the shipâs starboard side protruding from the sand bottom and 100-ft.-long (30-m-long) pile of ballast rocks next to the ribs. Eight giant Pacific octopuses were living in the ballast pile, perhaps because there was little else to make a den out of nearby in the bay, only vast expanses of sand and mud. These octopuses made dens where they could, even though they were closer to each other than they would have liked. Instead of just a home, this was an octopus condominium.
âRoland C. Anderson
Octopuses make their dens in many other human-donated items. Common octopuses of the Mediterranean Sea live inside ancient amphorae, sometimes all that is left of sunken Roman galleons on the sea floor. In the northeastern Pacific, the little red octopus may move into garbage on the sea floor. A female red octopus trawled up from the Friday Harbor area, in Washingtonâs San Juan Islands, was living in an old shoe. This was a female with eggs, so she was quickly named Mother Hubbard by the college class that found her.
Roland once found a giant Pacific octopus living in and blocking the active outfall of a sewer pipe in Tacoma, and a retired professional diver reported seeing several giant Pacific octopuses inside the boat locks between Lake Washington and Puget Sound during routine cleanings of the locks. Octopuses are frequently caught in crab traps in the North Pacific and in lobster pots in other parts of the world. They donât intend to use the traps as dens, but on their foraging expeditions they frequently pause in a temporary minimal shelter to quickly eat whatever prey theyâve caught, rather than take it home to eat it. And so a crab or lobster trap can become a snacking stop, replete with a handy supply of food. Unfortunately for the octopus, the trap is sometimes lifted to the surface before the animal has finished its snack and moved on. The octopus may then be used as bait for future catches.
Our trash can be useful for supporting octopus populations. On a recent scuba dive in Puget Sound, Roland saw eight beer bottles littering the bottom, and each had a small red octopus in it. Since the beer bottles at that dive site had 100 percent occupancy, the animals were utilizing a new resource. There was very little else for them to hide in other than a few large snail shells that were already occupied by hermit crabs, so lack of suitable dens could have stopped them from living there. Our trash may be increasing the range of this octopus to include areas that have no natural den sites. Secure in its beer bottle home, the animal is temporarily safe from predators. Ironically, the species may lately be facing a housing shortage. Environmental societies in coastal areas are cleaning up trash from public beaches, and as part of these cleanups scuba divers are picking up underwater trash, including beer bottles and cans.
The phenomenon of octopuses living in our beer bottle trash has been useful to researchers. Janet Voight did population studies in 1988 on Diguetâs pygmy octopus (Octopus digueti), which normally live in shells on intertidal sand flats in the northern Gulf of California. Strings of beer bottleswere set out at low tide and monitored for a year. The octopuses captured in this manner were not harmed as they are by other methods such as trawling, dredging, or noxious chemicals squirted into their dens. Dark beer bottles with narrow necks, tapering to an opening less than 1 in. (25 mm) wide, were used. About 14 percent of the bottles examined were occupied by the octopuses.
We have found that red octopuses in Puget Sound
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