Ocean Watch
By Susan Scott
Friday, May 18, 2001
Here's a letter I received last month from a local reader: "In an earlier column on the octopus, you wrote that its life span is two years. While the largest one I've ever caught weighed 6 pounds, I've seen pictures of 15- to 20-pounders. I can't imagine these animals growing to 20 pounds in two years. Is it possible only the female dies after spawning and the males live? Or are the larger animals a different species from the one you referred to?" Octopuses are
the stuff of legend,
lyricism, songThis question took me a month to answer, not because I couldn't find information on octopuses, but because I found too much information on octopuses. There are so many books, articles, Internet links and even songs ("I'd like to be, under the sea, in an octopus' garden ...") about these remarkable animals, it was hard not to stray.
My first diversion was an online discussion about the correct term for more than one octopus. In textbooks it's octopods. But few people use this term; most say octopi or octopuses. Dictionaries allow both, but octopi has always sounded wrong to me. Now I know why: It's a Greek word (oktopous) with a Latin ending (i).
It's bulky, but I like the English ending, octopuses.
Another octopus issue is what to call their appendages. Arms or tentacles are OK; legs or hands are not.
Octopuses' probing, sucking appendages made good monster stories in the past and good diving stories in the present. Here's a current one I ran across: A local diver caught a large octopus (likely our so-called day octopus, 3 feet wide from outstretched arm to outstretched arm) and put it in a zippered bag on his belt. Minutes later, his dive buddy heard banging on a scuba tank. She turned to see octopus arms all over her partner. One pulled on his face mask, which flooded, another probed his ear and a third pulled his hair.
While the three arms were occupied with the man's head, a fourth worked the bag's zipper down its track. The woman diver reported that she half expected to see another tentacle reach up and turn off the man's air valve.
The octopus didn't hurt the diver, though. It was just trying to get out of that bag. (I hope it did.)
Octopuses can do another trick with their agile tentacles: They release them to escape a predator. This isn't as drastic as it sounds because these creatures grow back missing arms.
Octopuses, I discovered, are sometimes the inspiration for lyrical writing.
This from Jacques Cousteau: "In the water the octopus looks like a silken scarf floating, swirling and settling gently as a leaf on a rock, the color of which it immediately assumes. ... The whole process is reminiscent of a ballet ... somehow ethereal, and at the same time elaborate, elegant and slightly mischievous."
On the Internet, I found another person who likes octopuses. A letter posted on an octopus site came from a paralyzed man who found great joy in his aquarium. He described the antics of his pet octopus and felt sad knowing it would die in a year or two.
"Are there any species that live longer?" he asked.
And there were the answers to my reader's questions.
Researchers believe that most octopus species live fast and die young. In those studied (not all have been), females mate once, lay eggs, tend them and die. Males mate as many times as they can in one breeding season and then also die.
Hundreds of octopus species exist, from a half-inch long to 30 feet long.
The larger ones start bigger, grow quickly and live two, maybe three years.
Hawaii's small day octopus lives only about one year.
Having finally answered the questions, I wearily shelved my books and shut down my modem. Now I only wish I could get that silly song out of my head.
Marine science writer Susan Scott's Ocean Watch column
appears weekly in the Star-Bulletin. Contact her at susanscott@hawaii.rr.com.
