Wonderpus vs Mimic Octopus- 04.01.10
Octopus obsession is only growing more with each one i encounter! Two today so far! One good sized amazing Wonderpus octopus (Wunderpus photogenicus) on a dive (they are pretty rare and only found here in bali/sulawesi! Only recently named/officially discovered)… and then during lunch we spotted another octopus hiding a few feet from us in the low tide! So waded out to it with a camera and it was so tame and incredibly docile… i even pet it! So lots of fun pics of both the octopus and wonderpus on the next page!
UPDATE: We’re now pretty certain that the other octopus is a Mimic Octopus, Thaumoctopus mimicus ~ which was only officially discovered in 1998 in sulawesi. It is the one that the Wonderpus is commonly mistaken for… and it mimics everything from flounders and eels to lion fish and sea snakes… and ours impressively becomes one with the rock as well as the sand… see an amazing video i found about them on the next page!
For the whole Kungkungan Bay Resort Lembeh Strait dive-cation series - [The dramatic moon] [First look at creatures!] [Frogfish, Nudibranchs, and more creatures!]
Firstly, here’s the Octopus ~ when looking out over the restaurant edge (where i take every meal next to the water so i can feed the fish…) ~ one of the other women joked about the manta ray we saw last night that she missed saying “well did you see the octopus?”… we thought she was kidding. She was in fact kidding. Until just a few feet from us… there was an octopus coming out of its hole… in about knee deep water… so after finishing up our food, we couldn’t help but wade over to it to take some pics with the little waterproof (but not waterproof enough for diving) camera… and followed it around for a bit! SO strangely tame, i even “pet” my first wild octopus… it didn’t squirt us… run away… or anything! Although to be fair, it has some impressive camouflage going on and probably didn’t even think we could see it…
And here’s the amazing SECOND wonderpus we saw on this trip! Really nice big sized one wandering around the ocean floor… Wonderpus octopus (Wunderpus photogenicus) ~ nice info over at wikipedia… and they are found only in shallow waters of bali/sulawesi ~ and were only discovered in the 80s! And this guy was found at the hilariously named Magic Crack dive spot at Kungkungan Bay Resort.
UPDATE: Here’s an awesome youtube video i found about the Mimic Octopus
Hi, Great shots! The second animal you photographed by the dock is Abdopus aculeatus (one of the bipedal walking octopuses). It’s a tough one to photograph- well done! Your Wunderpus shots nice and crisp too. If you have the time, date, and locality info please consider submitting them, along with the to the Wunderpix database (non-commercial, monitoring use: http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/Wunderpix.html )- no need to go through the Calphotos process).
happy diving!
C
----- Crissy H 03.04.10 20:23