The life of Octo-pi..
I can bet you that all
everyone talks about on marine blogs is turtles, fish, the occasional whale and
of course the ever talked about dolphins. It’s always about the dolphins.
Always. Well, today, I'm not going to talk about all the 12 dolphins we saw
this week. Or even how one of them did the most impressive leaps. Interpretive leaps, as Madam Kathryn just concluded.
That must have been a dolphin with character. But, as I said I am not here to
talk about the dolphins. Today, I tell you about one of the most forgotten yet
absolutely fascinating creatures of the sea. The Octopus…
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| A photo showing how well Octopus' can camouflage |
The only place I ever
really encountered octopus was in those miserable primary school books that decided
they were too uptown to use ‘O for Orange’ and instead went for ‘O for
Octopus’. That and those cartoons about sea animals that always felt the need
to dress in swimming trunks underwater. I had never really thought about or
felt the need to make a point of seeing an octopus in my life. I mean its not
very many people that go like “I want to take a holiday, go snorkelling and
hopefully see an octopus..”. It honestly doesn't sound too respectfully
ambitious. And so, it really was an unexpected new and thrilling experience to
encounter when I finally saw the Octopi today..
Now, I say ‘finally’
because it did take me like all of 6 minutes to see the octopi that were under
me the entire time. These our tentacle friends have mastered fully the art of
camouflage. Thalia, our head marine dolphin-whisperer kept pointing to a patch
of coral, trying to draw our attention to where the Octopi lay. But all I
could really see was pretty , spotted rocks. And so after a few minutes of flipper
flapping and breathing like Darth Vader through my snorkel, I FINALLY managed
to see the black and white outline of the octopus. And wasn't it exciting!!.
There he was just chilling on the pretty spotted rock, looking like the pretty
spotted rock. What gave him away was that he at that moment decided to stretch
out his 5th tentacle and tap his friend, a HUGE black and yellow
Octopus that was also just chilling on a rock that totally looked like him. It
really was an amazing thing to see. All 16 tentacles of it. A quiet, often
unnoticed moment in nature. Only that today, I noticed it. And it was lovely.
I can now confidently
and proudly declare my intentions to take a holiday, go snorkelling and see an
octopus. I dare say they are sea creatures with character. And of course, I
would like to see them multi-task…
And right after my
octopi moment, a semicircle angelfish
couple glided by holding fins. I kid you not. They were actually holding fins.
I think they were going on a date. Fishy romantic things :)
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