So Dad and I went for a dive at Cove 2 yesterday with a good friend of ours who promised to take us right to the mama Octo. And boy did he deliver. This would be my first mama octo ever, as mom and dad have already seen this lovely lady, so needless to say, I was hyped. True to his word, our buddy took us right to mama while hardly slowing down, but I managed to snag us a couple of pretty leopards in the midst of what I can only call a kiss.
And dad stopped us for a moment for a good sized Red Irish Lord.
But not long after, we got to mama, and wow was it a beautiful sight, even looking at it upside down, it was beautiful.
After a few moments, I righted myself and decided to get a few snapshots.
Now, dad and I noticed something when we were looking at this last picture. Looking at the eggs, we noticed these small uniform purpleish spots on each egg, is it just us, or are those baby octo eyes?
And just for fun, I headed around back behind the den and got a really great look at just how big her brood is.
After that, we meandered on over in the direction of the Honeybear, found ourselves a few buddies along the way.
A young Ratfish
A nice little flatfish.
A lonely little Striped Armina
And not one, but THREE Diamondback Tritonias, one of which looks like someone tried to take a bite out of it
A nice little Warbonnet
And to top it all off, the biggest damned Octo any of us have ever seen. This guy was so big that he completely filled the back of the 'cave' under the Honeybear. I squeezed myself into the space as best I could, got as close as I could, knew I could never get a clear shot with regular camera mode, so I switched into video and took a short vid. It's not much, the quality is crap, but I think it shows how big he was.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH-wAkwLl9U
After that, we had to head on back up, I had a ton of buoyancy difficulties that dive and couldn't take any more pictures, though to be honest, I didn't see much else after that. Even so, it was still a great dive and I would love to go back at night to see what's out there.
