Octopi Wall Street

Whoa! Octopus Takes off with Diver's Video Camera... While Recording!

(Feed readers click through for video)

Here's a synopsis from the owner himself:

While trying to get video of a wild octopus, it suddenly dashed towards me and rips my shiny new camera from out of my hands, then swims off, all while the camera is recording! he swam away very quickly like a naughty shoplifter

After a 5 minute chase, I placed my speargun underneath him and he quickly and curiously grabbed hold of the gun as well, giving me enough time to reach in and grab the camera from out of his mouth. I didn't feel threatened at all during the whole ordeal. he seemed to be fixated on the shiny metallic blue digital camera. the only confusing behavior was how he dashed off with it like a thief haha. cheeky octopus.

Haha!

New Wonders Found In The Oceans' Depths

From CBS News:

A city of brittle stars off the coast of New Zealand, an Antarctic expressway where octopuses ride along in a flow of extra salty water and a carpet of tiny crustaceans on the Gulf of Mexico sea floor are among the wonders discovered by researchers compiling a massive census of marine life.

"We are still making discoveries," but researchers also are busy assembling data already collected into the big picture of life in the oceans, senior scientist Ron O'Dor said.

The fourth update of the census was released Sunday ahead of a meeting of hundreds of researchers that begins Tuesday in Valencia, Spain. More than 2,000 scientists from 82 nations are taking part in the project, which is to be completed in 2010.

A discovery that delights O'Dor is that many deep-ocean octopuses share an Antarctic origin. As the Antarctic got colder, ice increased and octopuses were forced into deeper water, he said in a telephone interview.

Salt and oxygen are concentrated in the deeper waters, he said. This dense water then flows out, carrying along the octopuses that have adapted to the new conditions, enabling them to spread to deep waters around the world.

Deep-water octopuses worldwide, he pointed out, lack the ink sack that allows their shallow-water cousins to shoot out a camouflage screen.

After all, if they live where it is dark, ink is unnecessary, said O'Dor, a Canadian member of the research team.

Patricia Miloslavich, a senior scientist from Venezuela, is pleased with newly-discovered mollusks, from snails to cuttlefish to squids.

Once the census is complete, the plan is to publish three books: a popular survey of sea life, a second book with chapters for each working group, and a third focusing on biodiversity.

O'Dor said also researchers are working with the online scientific journal PLoS ONE, which is open to anyone and thus would make the results readily available.

Scientists at this week's sessions will hear about the discovery of what the researchers call a brittle star city off the coast of New Zealand.

The brittle stars, animals with five arms, have colonized the peak of a seamount - an underwater mountain - where the current flows past at about 2.5 miles per hour. The current delivers such an ample food supply that thousands of stars can capture food simply by raising their arms.

Researchers found a carpet of small crustaceans inhabiting the head of the Mississippi Canyon in the Gulf of Mexico. There are as many as 12,000 of these small crustaceans per square yard.

Read the other findings...

Meet Henry: World's First... Hexapus?

Marine experts are dubbing this six-legged octopus a hexapus!

Meet Henry!

English marine experts have laid their hands on an octopus that's missing two of its own: a six-limbed creature that they have dubbed 'hexapus.'

Ordinarily, octopodes have eight arms and legs. And should they lose one or more in an accident, they can grow the limbs back.

Which is what makes 'Henry' -- as staffers at Blackpool Sea Life Centre in northwest England have dubbed their find -- so unique.

His missing limbs stem from a birth defect.

"If you look closer between the legs, there's webbing that attaches each of the arms together," John Filmer of the Sea Life Centre told CNN Tuesday. "You'd assume if he'd lost one of his legs in an accident, there would be space for an arm to grow back.

"But there's no space for two extra legs to grow back. That's just how he is."

Staffers called others zoos and aquariums and scoured the Internet to see if there were records of similar creatures.

"No one has ever heard of another case of a six-legged octopus," said display superviser Carey Duckhouse.