An eeny weeny teeny little octopus at Victoria

Loyal readers of this blog: please forgive my recent fixation with aquatic critters. I can’t resist posting one more entry about octopuses — slimy, slinky, eight-armed wonders that they are.

Photographer Susan Rybar of Victoria was waiting on shore for some friends to complete a dive off the city’s Ogden Point when one of them surfaced with an old medicine bottle and placed it at her feet. Out of the bottle squirmed a tiny octopus! It stuck around long enough for Susan to snap this photograph before it wriggled back into the water.

James Cosgrove, British Columbia’s resident cephalopod expert, says Susan’s photo shows either a juvenile giant Pacific octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini), or a ruby octopus (Octopus rubescens), also known as the Pacific red octopus. It is common to find the young of either species taking shelter in cans and bottles in shallow water.

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Watch for Cosgrove’s new book Super Suckers: The Giant Pacific Octopus and Other Cephalopods of the Pacific Northwest (Harbour Publishing) this March. The text will include fascinating factoids, new research on octopus behaviour, anecdotes and legends, as well as underwater photographs taken by regular British Columbia Magazine contributor Neil McDaniel.

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