Welcome to the Marine Mammal and wildlife Research and Community Development Expedition blog where you can keep up to date with all the happenings and information from Kenya

Friday, June 21, 2013

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…

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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