Northwest Dive Club

TJ they're pretty common in your area - find any water access point and make a few night dives - you'll likely stumble across a few - especially if you look for broken shell substrate. Actually, I'm thinking that might be the best way to conduct your experiment - find some young octopuses in their natural environment and plant a few artificial options nearby. I think if you remove them from their environment to study elsewhere you'll end up with results that aren't really plausible. You could go visit them regularly to check on the popularity of the artificial dens versus the natural dens. In fact, you might be able to enlist help from some of the divers here to pay visits with you and collect data/photos/video with you. I know I'd be very interested in following along to see what you learn that way. Best of luck with your studies and welcome to the area. I hope you'll stick around and share some experiences from your days diving with the Navy.

Ya don't want to take from popular dive sites ... but there's nothing wrong with taking from NEAR popular dive sites. I know that one of the collection areas for the HCC aquarium is out from the beach south of the boat ramp at Redondo. Reds are common out there, and if you want some help from someone familiar with the area, let me know ...

Oh, and to address your question ... I see them more often in beer bottles ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Nice to see ya made it here TJ.
I'm sure you'll get all kind of advice on the best places to look for your lil' Red's.
It sounds like a very interesting study. I'm sure, if you keep the topic alive here you'll get plenty of heads up where people are seeing them.
You may be able to solicite other kinds of help by way of
other divers reporting to you where they may have seen a Red, along with any other data you may ask them to provide you with.
I'm not sure if you could incorporate 3rd party data. But if you could use that kind of help you might consider making some sort of data sheet that others could use to assist you and post it here.

Good luck TJ it was a pleasure meeting you the other day wish I could have been more help.

Howdy TJ,
Hope the site treats you well with your studies. Like I mentioned to you on the phone, some people don't even know the difference between a small gpo and a red octo, I didn't at first. You could post the distinguishing characteristics if distinguishing between species is important to your study. There are also many photographers that MAY be willing to share their photos. I believe that octos are opportunists and don't prefer one type of shelter over another, just what ever is the nearest place to seclude themselves. I rarely see them in bottles, even on bottle dives. They like hiding under boat hulls, in rock crevices, in pipes, under pipes, in cinder blocks, around "seaweeds", I frequently see small octopus in rocky areas and Ive seen only one in a moon snail shell. I agree that putting some bottles in an area and checking on them regularly to be a good start. Problem with the bottles I see a lot is that they are covered with tube worms, barnacles, etc... that you might not even notice them. BUT as posted in the tread on the new bottle reef at Steilacoom, you should have a permit to "leave your trash" underwater.
BTW anyone seen that bottle reef, anything to see living in there, besides sea stars?
Octos are smart, they will go where ever they need to be safe, or cammo themselves so they aren't seen. If you do collect them please go to great extent to keep them from escaping, given the chance they will....and they'll die.
You got my number if you need a good helping eye

mermaid:

Jackie

Hello TJ, nice to meet you.
Your study sounds very interesting. In my experience octos seem to love any place that makes them feel safe whether its natural or not. I've found them in almost everything from moon snail shells to tennis balls...

Going off what Winter posted,

Winter wrote: I agree that putting some bottles in an area and checking on them regularly to be a good start. Problem with the bottles I see a lot is that they are covered with tube worms, barnacles, etc... that you might not even notice them. BUT as posted in the tread on the new bottle reef at Steilacoom, you should have a permit to "leave your trash" underwater.

Instead of placing bottles you could use sections of the bottle field at Redondo, or elsewhere, and place a quadrate so that it contains a good selection of preexisting bottles. We tend to do this on Ruston way when we do Eel grass counts, but thats just my 2psi.

BTW if you ever need some help just send me a pm. I'm transferring to UW or Hawaii Pacific(hopefully) next year to study oceanography.


*edited to get Spatman off off my back about not mentioning HPU *

Winter wrote: I rarely see them in bottles, even on bottle dives.

I've seen several ... bottled and canned ... this is just a partial listing ...

















... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Woh those pics make me sick. My ghetto 5 yr old cannon, tape holding the batteries in... Lookin for one to replace it asap

Love the jungle joose pic!

The tiny ones seem to prefer beer bottles and are seldom seen out and about. The larger ones seem to like more natural cover even if there are larger bottles that they could use and they are much more likely to seen out and about. The bottle fields I explore have many larger bottles (mason jar size) but I have never seen an octo in one. My experiance suggests that they only like the darker bottles. I have never seen one in a clear bottle. In areas with silty or sandy bottoms I have seen many living in holes in the bottom. Like this little guy

Thanks to everyone who has taken our survey on the East Pacific Red Octopus!

We have to temporarily remove this survey in order to discuss the format with our faculty.

We are discussing and making any necessary changes tomorrow afternoon, and we will be posting the survey back onto this forum then.

Those of you who have already taken the survey, your data is saved in our data base and still will be used for our study.

Thank you guys for all your help,

TJ

TJ,

What are your survey dates? Do you want us to go back and give you data from previous dives or from this point forward until such-and-such a date?

Also, just a heads up . . . when you ask for dive site and you leave it open to whatever we write, you may get some wildly varying answers. Do you want a lot of different sites as long as they are in the Puget Sound? Or do you want it restricted to only certain popular sites so you get on-going data from the same area?

(Forgive me if I'm thinking too much about this, but my mother is a professor of Recreation Resource Management in Oregon and has done a lot of research exploring the attitudes people have about recreation on public lands . . . so I grew up around surveys and listened to many discussions about "how" to ask a question. It can be quite a science!)

Kelly,

Our survey dates are going to be from now until mid May. I had to temporarily remove the survey to discuss formatting with our faculty. I will be posting the survey again tomorrow through mid May. As far as re-phrasing the question about dive location, I will discuss that with our faculty and my group tomorrow afternoon. This is a work in progress for us as we learn the best method. By talking to you, and the rest of the forum we have learned that the survey needs to be better written and possibly be an ongoing data collection vehicle for the Puget Sound area. It seems like if this survey was made to be an ongoing database through the years, a lot of knowledge could be learned about these animals now and in the future.

Do you have any suggestions for sites that should be an option in the survey, instead of us just leaving it blank?

Thank you for help,

TJ

Hey TJ

Something to consider, if it hasn't been already, is that many online survey apps don't allow people to take the survey more than once to prevent spamming or skewing responses.

If you want users to record their octo sightings for months to come, be sure that their IP addresses aren't being recorded and blocking them from entering data more than once from their home/work/etc computer.

TJ Yockachonis wrote:Kelly,

Our survey dates are going to be from now until mid May. I had to temporarily remove the survey to discuss formatting with our faculty. I will be posting the survey again tomorrow through mid May. As far as re-phrasing the question about dive location, I will discuss that with our faculty and my group tomorrow afternoon. This is a work in progress for us as we learn the best method. By talking to you, and the rest of the forum we have learned that the survey needs to be better written and possibly be an ongoing data collection vehicle for the Puget Sound area. It seems like if this survey was made to be an ongoing database through the years, a lot of knowledge could be learned about these animals now and in the future.

Do you have any suggestions for sites that should be an option in the survey, instead of us just leaving it blank?

Thank you for help,

TJ

TJ,

I think a drop-down with an already populated list would be easier on YOU than making sure that results from "Sund Rock North Wall" and "North Wall Sund Rock" and "N. Wall Sund" are together. And can be distinguished from "Sund Wall South Wall" or "S Wall Sund" etc, etc, etc.

You might want to check out the dive sites listed with REEF. They have been collecting critter surveys from folks for years, and they have a process (but I'll admit I don't know what exactly it is) to "approve" a dive site listing. Janna (nwscubamom) would be able to help you out there, but I would say that co-oping their comprehensive list might be an easy way to go if they agree. Or . . . you could cross-refernce our NWDC list with planyourdive.com and theperfectdive.com to come up with a pretty extensive--yet common to most of us--list. Then you can have an "Other" fill-in box if the site the person visited is not listed.

I'm excited for you! I think this is a great start to some research I'd be interested in following!!

Sounds great Kelly! Thanks for the info. For now, we have updated and left the location blank (just because of our being unfamiliar with local dive sights). We have discussed possibly making an ongoing database that could be monitored for years to come. For this study, our group is only focused on whether there might be a difference between a natural den location and an artificial (beer bottles). We are just focused on the Puget Sound (any dive site) as the general population for this study. I am very excited because in just a few weeks of designing this study, it has already evolved into a potentially large and promising octopus database for the future.

Any more ideas are welcome!

Thanks TJ

Hello Everyone!

The study members and I have updated the Red Octopus survey to give more complete data regarding our study.

Below is the link to our survey.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NVVRSBC

Again, the data previously entered was saved in our database and will be used in this study (no need to fill it out again).

The survey will take place from now until the end of May.

We have talked about possibly making a long term database that can be monitored by the public in the future! This could aid in the known population for the Red Octopus!

Please pass the survey on to anyone that might see one of the awesome creatures while on a dive!

Thank you as always,

TJ Yockachonis

You've probably already talked with Roland Anderson, cephalopod biologist emeritus with the Seattle Aquarium. If not, I recommend you see if you can reference his historic octopus count data.
cheers
Richard

[thread moved to Critter Watchers forum]

We have tried to get in touch with Roland Anderson, but have not yet gotten a reply. We are basing our research of one of his study's that observed the Red Octopus in beer bottles. We would love to ask him some questions about methods of approach, if anyone knows how to contact him???

Thanks,

TJ

TJ Yockachonis wrote:We have tried to get in touch with Roland Anderson, but have not yet gotten a reply. We are basing our research of one of his study's that observed the Red Octopus in beer bottles. We would love to ask him some questions about methods of approach, if anyone knows how to contact him???

Thanks,

TJ

Call the Aquarium and ask to speak with one or the other can probably help you or know who can. Roland is essentially retired and while he'd probably enjoy talking octopus with you, he has not been in the best of health.

Thanks you to everyone who has taken our octopus survey!

Keep em' comin!

TJ