Northwest Dive Club

http://www.uwphotographyguide.com/octop ... eath-birth

Great video!! Thanks for sharing!!

Thanks for sharing, it is always interesting to see the where and how the octo mom tends to the next generation of our favorite NW critter.

Very nice!!!

Did she die? Why did she die?

Glad everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. I'd really like to be able to monitor a mama octo's den myself, someday.

RenaB wrote:Did she die? Why did she die?

She did. It's part of the GPO's cycle of life. Read the accompanying article: Octopus Life, Death & Birth at Three Tree Point at the link provided for more details on the GPO life-cycle.

Rena, Once a mother octo makes her nest and lays her eggs she will never leave the nest again nor will she eat. So as time passes she gets weaker and weaker until she starves and dies. Hopefully this will be as her babies begin to hatch because she has to keep the eggs clean and aerated or they will die also. It's like the salmon and many other species. They use up their life force in order to create new life. It seems sad but it is what works. The species have survived because they developed a method to insure success.

Ok, so I am doing a small calculation in my mind here. One nest per female. Two eggs to full maturity. Why are we eating them? Seems like they don't breed fast enough. And most are male then? And none of the guys are well, getting any then?

This is sad, and the piano music....I don't like it.

OMG!! The male dies too?

OK, wait a minute wait a minute. It can't be two eggs that survive. Then the population never goes up? I know average and all that, but not all of them make it to maturity. Average must be more than two. Still pretty small for sacraficing two lives.

I don't like it.

Hi Rena,

Actually, it must be two eggs (on average) that survive to reproduce - otherwise we would soon be up to our armpits in octopuses!

When an organism appears in a suitable environment, its population grows fairly rapidly to a stable point that may be referred to as that environment's carrying capacity for that particular organism. Obviously there will be fluctuations but, once the population reaches the carrying capacity, the basic reproductive mission becomes to replace mom and dad - but no more or less than that.

Compared to some other organisms the octopus is pretty efficient in terms of the number of eggs required to produce a stable population. Consider the Ochre Star; a female of this species may produce two to ten million eggs per year during a reproductive lifetime that can easily exceed a decade or two - call it a hundred million eggs to generate two mature adults.

Statistically yours,

Alex

Really nice close up work of the egg clusters. Thanks for sharing this!

Happy diving,
Seainggreen