Shake Hands (ALL of 'em) with O.Dofleini the Great
Somewhere in the basement of the Seattle Aquarium, six Port Townsenders gather around a utilitarian saltwater tank, lift the top hatch, and peer into the watery blackness. “Hello, Harry,” somebody says. “ Come on out and see us.”
A mottled-red tentacle slithers to the surface, up and out of the hatch. It keeps on coming, groping for something – food, or love, or just contact with another intelligent being. Another tentacle follows, finds a humanoid hand and wraps itself around it. The hand recoils, and the rubbery suckers break loose with a bubblewrap-like crackle.
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“Meet Harry,” says our aquarium guide. “Harry Potter.”
For 20 minutes or so, we stand around that inelegant tank, shaking hands with a slimey critter named for a wizard and equipped with enough limbs to greet us all at the same time.
Harry, of course, is not just your everyday octopus. He is O. dofleini -- a giant Pacific Octopus – the world’s largest known octopus species. In addition, he is the aquarium’s octopus in waiting; soon he will be moved upstairs to the main octopus display tank, replacing the present occupant, who is about to be released into Elliott Bay.
Port Townsend is home to lots of giant Pacific octopus. They can be found living in the rock jetty at Point Hudson. A single shipwreck in Discovery Bay once proved to a rocky condominium for at least eight big guys. Steve Blazina, a Marrowstone Island diver with a longtime affinity for O.dofleini – recently found one living in a log just offshore from Swain’s ; that critter now resides at the Marine Science Center in Pousbo.
But, for those without scuba tanks, the Seattle aquarium remains the best place around to get up close and personal. Staff biologist Roland Anderson has been caring for and studying local octopus for some 30 years, and he probably knows them better than anyone.
At about 30 pounds, Harry is no monster. Giant Pacifics are rumored to exceed 100 pounds, .jpg)
measuring more than 12 feet from the tip of one tentacle to another. (Their smaller cousins, O. rubescens or "red octopuses," are teacup sized.) But most “giants” are more or less Harry’s size.
Large or small, the octopus is a physiological masterpiece - eight tentacles, each of which can operate independently or in graceful synchrony with the others, all emerging from beneath a soft, hoodlike mantle topped by two eyes that seem to size up visitors with profound skepticism.
Nothing else on earth moves quite like an octopus. Most of time, they move on the bottom, not so much walking as flowing and oozing, each tentacle doing its share of the work. But, when inspired to do so, they become jet-propelled, ingesting sea water and ejecting it at will through a flexible funnel, hurtling through the water like guided missiles.
They are masters of disguise, instantly flashing from red to orange to brown to white – reflecting the whim or emotion of the moment, or the color of their environment. Unburdened by a skeleton, they are expert contortionists, squeezing through impossibly small spaces. They are strong enough to lift more than their own weight; if Harry’s tank weren’t latched, he would slither out and across the concrete, searching for an ocean.
And they are very, very smart -- at least by invertebrate standards. Anderson has spent years studying and illustrating their intelligence.
Octopuses are born, appropriately enough, under rocks, which is where mom deposits some 50,000 to 75,000 eggs, each the size of a grain of rice, and guards the nest four to six months. Once hatched, the newborn octopus floats with the currents, feeding on plankton, gaining as much as 2 percent of its body weight per day. Most will be gobbled up by larger creatures, but the fortunate few who reach maturity will live three to five years.
As adults, they live in rocky dens and crevices, in shipwrecks or discarded tires or even beer bottles - any place they can squeeze themselves for protection from predators. Their strictly carnivorous diet soon graduates to crabs, clams and fish.
Their feeding strategy is unique, Anderson says. Octopus have a rasping tongue, much like a small file. They may just pull a clam apart, or they may use that tongue to drill a pinhole in the shell of a clam and inject a saliva that kills the organism within seconds.
Anderson has recently learned that they are smart enough to seek the easiest method available. But, given the opportunity, they relish their clams pre-processed – on the halfshell.
The octopus has a parrotliike beak which, in combination with its venom, gives it a nasty bite. Anderson has never been bitten, but some of his colleagues have been. The toxin causes pain and swelling comparable with a bee sting, he says, and may leave a scar. Ironically, the smaller red octopus is more likely to bite than the giants, whom Anderson describes as "pussycats."
They are somewhat transient creatures, moving from den to den, staying a month or so until it has depleted the local food supply. In some cases, octopuses will stay in their dens, wait for something tasty to swim by and snag it. Or they may venture out to hunt, gallumphing along the bottom on all eights until they find a crab and surround it. As adults, they use their jets only in emergencies - to chase meals or avoid becoming one.
There is no reliable data on their populations, but Anderson is confident they’re faring well. Each year, he organizes an informal daylong survey, during which amateur divers are asked to look for octopus and report what they find. The results have been fairly consistent, he says – about 200 divers reporting a total of 70 or so octopus sightings. That suggests there are plenty of O. dofleini out there.
This despite a rather Spartan sex life. They spawn just once, the male using its specialized tentacle to deliver a "spermatophore," or packet of sperm, to the female, who tucks it away for future use. When she's ready, she uses the sperm to fertilize her thousands of eggs and deposits them under a rock.
That’s where the fun ends. After mating, the male "goes a little crazy," stops eating and abandons its den, which frees up space for his mate. Then he dies. The female hangs on, guards her brood for several months, manipulating the eggs, using her funnel to keep them clean. She, too, stops eating, her body shrinking until the eggs hatch. And then she dies as well.
People have been fishing for octopus for thousands of years. The ancient Greeks simply lowered clay pots to known octopus habitat and left them there a day or so; when they hauled them back to the surface, the newly resident octopus became tomorrow's calamari. The strategy still works. Octopuses can be caught with a rubber tire tied to a rope.
Anderson prefers to catch them by hand, scuba-diving into known "octopus holes" such as Neah Bay, Hood Canal, Tacoma Narrows. Collectors entice them out of their dens, grab a tentacle or two and stuff them into a plastic bag.
Anderson has spent years figuring out how to keep them in captivity. They are comfortable in small spaces, and don’t seem to mind being handled, he says. And they’ll eat just about anything they are offered. But, if left in the main tank, an octopus will reject frozen herring and other handouts in favor of its live neighbors.
But perhaps Anderson’s biggest discovery is that octopuses have emotions, and wear them on all eight sleeves. "Color changes seem to be linked to behavior," he says. "We're investigating how and why, but they seem to have a range of messages: `I'm ready to mate now,' or `Predator coming!' or "Leave me alone, I'm taking a nap."
With its mammallike eyes and brains, the octopus exhibits un-invertebrate behaviors such as sleep. The journal Science recently reported Anderson's research on octopus "play." Each of eight octopuses was provided with a white pill bottle. Some ignored it. Some used their funnels to blow it away. Still others shot it around the tank, retrieved it, and shot it again, and again. Anderson sees this as "repetitive, long-term behavior with no apparent function - except that it feels good, which is the definition of `play.' "
Maybe that’s what Harry had on his mind the other day when he reached out and touched his Port Townsend visitors.
