
The deepest ever sighting of an octopus, by cameras on the Indian Ocean floor - pseudolus
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52839678
======
ilikepi
There was an interesting episode of Radiolab a couple weeks ago about a group
of researchers who found a deep water octopus brooding over its eggs, and how
they continued to check in with it regularly. I'm not selling it well because
I don't want to spoil it:

[https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/octom...](https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/octomom)

~~~
nkozyra
In that this particular octopus differs from others by not standing guard
until the mother dies of exhaustion? That's interesting, I thought that was
one common thing among all but one species of octopus.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Huh? The podcast says exactly the opposite. The octopus was not observed to
die, but she was observed to deteriorate.

> We knew we were at the right place, we could see the -- the patch on the
> rock. And there were all of these tattered egg cases just in the spot where
> she had been.

> Tattered egg cases means that the babies had been born?

> Well, the first thing we did was search. Are there babies on the rock? Are
> the babies still here? Or did any of them survive? Or was it some sort of
> apocalyptic demise at the hands of all those hungry looking crabs?

> So they’re frantically sort of searching around the rock. Searching and
> searching and searching. And then they begin to see little babies that are
> her species. And they see a little baby here ...

> And a little baby there.

> Little octopuses crawling around.

> They’d been feeding and growing, and it was pretty clear that they were
> hatchlings from that clutch of eggs that we had observed.

> And did you see her?

> Nope. I’m certain that she had been consumed by some scavenger.

How did "the mother definitely died after the eggs hatched" turn into "this
octopus differs from others by not standing guard until the mother dies of
exhaustion"?

The only difference the podcast mentions is that this octopus has a
gestational period about 50 times as long as other, better-known octopuses.

~~~
nkozyra
I'm not sure I follow your protest. I was talking mostly about the difference
between "checking in" and not leaving at all, as most mother octopuses do.

~~~
thaumasiotes
The mother octopus never left at all. It didn't move until the eggs hatched.
The "checking in" was done by the scientists ("they"), on the octopus ("it").
Not by the octopus ("they"?) on the eggs ("it"... cannot be used to refer to
160 eggs).

~~~
nkozyra
What a perplexingly hostile way to engage with someone.

~~~
Spare_account
In case the opinion of a third party watching this exchange is useful, I felt
that thaumasiotes's comments were reasonable and your comment above is the
first to contain hostility.

Your confusion may stem from the fact that you mis-read thaumasiotes's first
comment and you were on the back foot from that point forwards.

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rawoke083600
Stupid question... do we(people of earth and the land-above) not "blind" these
creatures ? The ones that do have "light sensitive eyes/appendixes" these must
be INCREDIBLE sensitive to capture the very very limited light down at those
depths ? Then we come with our zillion-lumens-spotlights ?

~~~
thdrdt
Not a stupid question.

And this Reddit contains multiple answers:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2n1yd4/how_is_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2n1yd4/how_is_it_that_when_deep_sea_creatures_are_filmed/)

Yes, they get blind from white light.

------
pseudolus
The New Yorker had a feature article on the expedition and Victor Vescovo, the
expedition sponsor and one of the expedition's pilots [0].

[0] [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/18/thirty-six-
tho...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/18/thirty-six-thousand-
feet-under-the-sea)

~~~
darkteflon
Came here to mention this also. This was such a great article - a perceptive
and engaging portrait of Victor Vescovo and his motley crew. It’s quite long
but worth every minute.

------
pvaldes
Ophistoteutidae then, and most probably Grimpoteuthis. Nice photo

The fish is probably a Bassozetus

and the caridean could be Benthesicymus (or Acanthephyra?)

------
EvanWard97
`But those animals that do live at depth will clearly need some special
adaptations, says Dr Jamieson.

"They'd have to do something clever inside their cells. If you imagine a cell
is like a balloon - it's going to want to collapse under pressure. So, it will
need some smart biochemistry to make sure it retains that sphere," the
scientist explained.`

I don't understand how octopi would need special cellular adaptations for
living at t those depths. So long as their cells do not require air cavities
(fairly certain they don't), I can't see what the issue could be.
_Differential_ pressure can cause problems, but there's no delta-p when your
cells are equally incompressible solids and liquids.

I hope that I'm wrong though and that this scientist isn't as mistaken as they
sound.

~~~
neurostimulant
High hydrostatic pressure seem to affect cell morphology, possibly due to
changes in protein shapes while under extreme pressure. I only did some
cursory googling and found several research papers about how pressure
affecting cell morphology, for example this one on epithelial cells:
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3052872/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3052872/)

> At atmospheric pressure, cells were flat and well attached.

> Exposure of cells to pressures of 290 atm or greater caused cell rounding
> and retraction from the substrate.

------
griffinkelly
What's the difference between the cellular makeup of this octopus/ or any deep
sea animal to make it able to sustain that kind of pressure?

~~~
vmception
The article suggests this is unknown

------
FredrikMeyer
I read the book "Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of
Consciousness" last year. Very interesting book about octopi.
[https://www.amazon.com/Other-Minds-Octopus-Origins-
Conscious...](https://www.amazon.com/Other-Minds-Octopus-Origins-
Consciousness/dp/0374537194)

~~~
gboss
To be honest, I found that book all over the place. It was interesting, but
its message could be condensed to half its length. There was a lot of musing
and scattered anecdotes but not much direction. I hope a higher quality book
can come out about Octopuses. It was a bit of a let down for me.

------
davesque
I've heard octopi are pretty smart so they must also be pretty deep.

~~~
ncmncm
If you want to be sophisticated, it's "octopoda". Slightly less, "octopods".
Correct, "octopuses".

~~~
mavam
Pluralization of the word "octopus" has been a long-studied topic:
[https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-many-
plura...](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-many-plurals-of-
octopus-octopi-octopuses-octopodes)

------
ddrt
Don’t we discover 3k to 6k new species every year? Why is this even relevant
given that scope?

~~~
PudgePacket
> The animal was spotted 7,000m down in the Java Trench - almost 2km deeper
> than the previous reliable recording.

------
TekMol
What is the "bait" in that photo?

If it is another animal, that would make me feel very uncomfortable about the
whole operation.

~~~
irrational
Why? Animals eating other animals is quite common. Even herbivores are known
to eat other animals (horses like snacking on baby chicks).

~~~
dmos62
> horses like snacking on baby chicks
    
    
        (O.O)
    

I feel like the whole death-life cycle is getting harder and harder to grok.
When the closest you get to life and death is packaged meat in a grocery
store, it's easy to forget with what ease (the inherently innocent) nature can
deal out death.

