The Big Red Octopus
The water in Oman was cold, too cold for my liking. It was also green and murky, enough so to make me wonder why so many of the European guests kept coming back for more. I had spent six weeks telling myself it was only for two hours a day. Surely anything is tolerable for two hours a day. Since I was working, bringing my camera along had not been an option, but now the end of my stay in Oman was drawing near and I had no photographic evidence to show for it. Was it worth venturing back into the cold just to snap a few green, blurry photos? It took me six weeks to decide that yes, yes it was.
It was as though the universe worked its magic on the Gulf of Oman those last three days to thank me for sticking it out the entire six weeks. The visibility cleared up, the water ditched the algae green color and turned a more welcoming shade of cool blue, and the temperature warmed to a balmy 28 °C. I wasn’t sure whether to be ecstatic that the diving was finally something to obsess over again, or whether to be bitter that that the gulf had been holding out on me. The ocean is a fickle friend.
The Gulf of Oman had introduced me to several interesting, new species that I had never seen before, and so I was eager to take their photos. I spent a joyful twenty minutes or so, going from one fish to the next, taking its photo, and subsequently saying goodbye. After all, I might never see them again. I had no reason to plan on ever being in this part of the world again. But some of the fish that I had grown fond of deserved a proper goodbye.
The Gulf of Oman continued to give me a memorable sendoff, and a moment later I saw a massive blob of a creature, perched all proud and tall on a rock: the big red octopus.
I had seen one octopus previously over the course of the six weeks, and he had been massive! Fletch had also had the pleasure of meeting one, and had confirmed that yes, the octopuses in Oman were much larger than the common variety we had become accustomed to in the Pacific islands. I’m talking head the size of a basketball at least. And I had started to think that such large creatures were myths of old seafaring legends, or monsters confined to the deepest depths of the ocean.
There I was though, staring at a massive mound of moldable tentacles and suckers the size of coins. What a beauty. She wasn’t afraid of us either. Octopuses are extremely intelligent creatures, second only to dolphins as far as marine intelligence ranks. You can always tell if they are hunted for food in any given location or not, based on how skittish they are. Fijians would eat anything and everything out of the ocean, and so to find an octopus was an extremely rare thing. As soon as you spotted one, they were gone a moment later.
Not this gal though. She posed and changed colors and put on a dazzling show for us, seemingly happy to be in front of the camera.
I always struggle with identifying octopus species due to their ability to change shape and color, but one of the books in the dive shop said that the octopus commonly found in Oman was called the “big red octopus.” Common names vary from book to book, but I liked that one, so it stuck.
I love octopuses. When I find them in the ocean, I always hope that I’m with a group that is as eager to spend the rest of the dive staring at them in awe as I am. How could anyone ever get board of watching a creature that can morph size and shape, change its texture to look smooth or bumpy like the surrounding corals, and change from snow white to angry red in the blink of an eye? Luckily my dive buddy, an older gentleman, had a large camera and was happy to spend some time in photographer mode.
Staring at her dumbbell-shaped slit of an eye, I was reminded of this delightful book I read, The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery. There are so many fascinating things about octopuses we have discovered that I couldn’t even hope to list them all in one blog post. Things such as how octopus females spend the last months of their lives dutifully tending to their eggs. How in captivity, octopuses can differentiate between people, and become attached to some of them while disliking others. They even joke around with some people, by siphoning water at them every time they greet them. They are so intelligent that they grow bored quickly in captivity, and have to be given puzzles to solve in order to stay stimulated.
The big red octopus gave up her perch on the rock after a few minutes of photo session and went galloping, that’s right, galloping, across the reef. I’ve heard of octopuses walking before. I’ve seen them use their siphons to squirt water out and move via jet propulsion. But never had I seen an octopus combine the two methods to seemingly skip across the seafloor. What a strange and magical sight.
She stopped at another rocky outpost to strike a few more poses for the camera, and then went along on her merry way, leaving me smiling more than I had on any previous dive all month. Thank you, Big Red Octopus, for being the highlight of my underwater time in Oman.
Up next, Oman was home to a vast array of critters that were either toxic, venomous, or at least looked intimidating. Meet a few of a their creepy faces! Some of them don’t even have faces!
