Rare deep sea creature spotted swimming at surface stuns: 'Never seen this'
The creature made headlines in Australia a couple years ago when it was spotted in the Great Barrier Reef.
Amazing footage of a “beautiful” sea creature rarely seen by people has stunned thousands around the world after going viral.
The lengthy clip shows the technicolour “deep sea” animal gliding at the surface of the ocean in between a jetty and a row of kayaks. It is unknown where the footage was captured, but a group of witnesses speaking Spanish can be seen walking alongside the long creature as it approaches them.
Two people then crouch down to get a closer look, causing the marine animal to dart away from the pier. “Is it squid or what?” one of the men says, to which the other responds “something similar to”. “It’s in a hurry. I have never seen something like this before. It is the cousin of a squid I think,” he continued.
The video of the “creepy” but “cool” find quickly went viral after being posted to a US radio host’s Facebook page on Monday, gaining more than 500,000 views in just days and being re-posted to other pages, including one group dedicated to Australian nature and wildlife.
“Can someone tell me what sea monster this is?” the caption says.
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Creature revealed to be a blanket octopus
While some people social media users thought the creature was an “oarfish” or “giant squid”, several others identified it as a blanket octopus — which gets its name from its female counterpart’s “long, fleshy ‘cape’ enclosing its tentacles”, according to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.
Aquatic biology lecturer Dr Benjamin Mos told Yahoo News Australia the mollusc seen in the clip does appear to be a blanket octopus. “There are four species of blanket octopus, all of which are rarely seen by humans,” he explained. “This is because they tend to live in the open ocean and move around a lot searching for prey (typically fish).”
Some viewers expressed concern for the octopus given it was filmed swimming at the surface during the day — which Dr Mos agreed is “generally an atypical behaviour for most marine animals”.
“In comparison to other images and videos of blanket octopus that I have seen, the mantle (the bulbous ‘head’ part) appears overly large or inflated,” he said. “This might explain why the animal appears to be swimming at the surface in the daylight.”
The female blanket octopus grows to around 2 metres in length, but in comparison, the male octopus measures a mere 2.4cm — smaller than a walnut. They are found in both subtropical and tropical oceans, living amongst coral reefs.
In 2022, a blanket octopus — which is immune to deadly jellyfish stings— was spotted for only the fourth time off Lady Elliot Island on the Great Barrier Reef. “I was really, really excited and couldn’t stop screaming into my snorkel,” biologist Jacinta Shackleton, who made the discovery, told the ABC at the time.
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