We use cookies to improve your experience, some are essential for the operation of this site.

Red octopus clinging to Alvin manipulator arm.

Red octopus clinging to Alvin manipulator arm.
Red octopus clinging to Alvin manipulator arm.
Red octopus clinging to Alvin manipulator arm.
Red octopus clinging to Alvin manipulator arm.
Comments (0)
59821
Strickrott, Bruce
Red octopus clinging to Alvin manipulator arm.
Still Image
05/31/2006
octopus.jpg
Image taken from DSV Alvin while diving with Chuck Fisher in the Gulf of Mexico, in a brine lake at around 2300 meters. A female octopus, which may be the deepest example of that particular species.
Image of The Day caption:
"Most octopuses will let you get close, maybe even touch them, but normally they'll try to run once the manipulator gets close," said Alvin pilot Bruce Strickrott, of his encounter with a deep-sea octopus 2,300 meters down (about 7,500 feet) in the Gulf of Mexico. This female was docile and, instead of swimming away, grabbed the submersible's robotic manipulator arm, used for picking up samples of seafloor rocks and organisms.
Caption from Oceanus magazine, Vol. 51, No. 1, pg. 66:
Close encounters with Alvin.
A big red octopus grabbed onto Alvins arm at 7,500 feet deep and was discovered to be a new species (Benthoctopus sp.).
Image taken from DSV Alvin while diving with Chuck Fisher in the Gulf of Mexico, in a brine lake at around 2300 meters. A female octopus, which may be the deepest example of that particular species.
Caption from Oceanus magazine, Vol. 45, No. 3, back cover:
AN EIGHT-TENTACLED HUG— “Most octopuses will let you get close, maybe even touch them, but normally they’ll try to run once the manipulator gets close,” said Alvin pilot Bruce Strickrott. Instead of swimming away, this female octopus grabbed the submersible’s robotic manipulator arm, used for picking up samples of seafloor rocks and organisms. Strickrott and Penn State biologist Chuck Fisher encountered the octopus 7,500 feet (2,300 meters) down in the Gulf of Mexico in May 2006 and collected it for Janet Voight to study. Voight, an octopus specialist and curator at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, said the animal may have become disoriented and thus acted docile after her paperthin skin absorbed sulfide and other chemical-laced fluids leaking from seafloor cracks, called cold seeps. In addition to the invertebrate’s large size, the octopus’s bright orange color is unusual among octopuses living at depths below a half mile (800 meters), Voight said. “Normally they are kind of purple.”
Image courtesy of Expedition to the Deep Slope 2006, NOAA-OE
© Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Labels
This item includes these files
Image
Image
Collections