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Giant Octopus Attacks Sub
Apostata writes "As reported by the CBC, 'Salmon researchers working on the Brooks Peninsula [British Columbia] were shocked last November when an octopus attacked their expensive and sensitive equipment.' Apparently it was caught on video, but no word on when/where it will be available. Apparently this is the first documented attack." Obviously the start of something bigger.
A link to the original video can be found on this page (video is 2.9Mbyte .mpg file). Also, a mirror of the video can be found here. The link above to the video page has a detailed summary of what happened:
A giant pacific octopus attacked a Seaeye Falcon ROV working off Vancouver Island as it was locating and recovering receivers tracking pacific offshore salmon migration.
The incident was caught on the ROV's video by Mike Wood of SubOceanic Sciences Canada. He had just located a data recorder and taken a grip of the cable with the ROV's manipulator arm, when suddenly an 80 lb octopus launched an attack.
With tentacles 'as thick as man's arm' and a bite that he believed can exert 1000 lbs pressure, Mike Wood feared the octopus would bite the camera cable or umbilical and trip out the Falcon ROV.
Not wanting to lose the receiver that he had just located he decided to take on the creature and after tightening his grip of the cable with the manipulator arm, revved the ROV's thrusters in reverse in an attempt to blast seabed particles at the creature. For a moment the octopus appeared to intensify its attack with its mantle flared but eventually the swirling fragments drove it away.
The giant pacific octopus, octopus dofleini, is the largest species of octopods and although it grows to an average weight of 50 to 90 lbs with a span of 16 ft, a monster 600 lbs one has been recorded. They are intelligent creatures who can negotiate mazes and learn to unscrew jars to remove food. No problem disassembling an ROV then.
This Page @ The CBC has the video in Real or Quicktime.
In the video some "octopus expert" said "could've been lookin' for a girlfriend, could've been senile".
Sounds like some kind of oceanographer joke: Why did the octopus attack the sub? "could've been lookin' for a girlfriend"
> Phillipine Giant Octopus Attack in December 27 1989 read more http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~bz050/goattack.html.
From the link...
"This story sounds a little fishy too me. It seems strange that an octopus would leave the bottom and come up and attack a boat. Octopi stay near the bottom, and even big ones are timid. Many divers have swum with the giant octopus off the coast of British Columbia, which can grow to 272 kilograms and have a 9.6 metres arm span, and the octopi always swim away. And finally, to end my debunking of the above sighting, octopuses feed on the bottom (eating crabs,shellfish, carrion etc.) and wouldn't come to the surface to attack a possible food item that is as big as its self.
Source: Summarized by Ben S. Roesch from Denver Post, December 27 1989. "
The best link you can provide to your story about an earlier occurance is a link that tries to prove the story false?
OK, so maybe the incident I am remembering was a squid. But a giant cephalopod is a giant cephalopod, right?
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
Check on this article.. -
.... well lets say the giant Octopus thought he was food - and so he earned a nice tatoo when the squid tried to gnaw on him from the head down.
Spelling errors were made for your amusement only...
Well, you've nailed it on the "sub" portion; most other sites had "mini-sub" in the headline. However, the Octopus *is* giant. It's the name of the species. One was reported to be 600lbs, though that's obviously above the statistical average.
They're strong buggers, too. If you were underwater and had a choice between a shark or an octopus attacking you, go with the shark. You have a better chance of survival.
This article is an eye-roller. The octopus didn't attack at all. Even before seeing the video I was a bit skeptical how one could distinguish an "attack" from other activity. If you watch the video you'll see that the octopus was moving very slowly, and only touched the sub with the tip of one, maybe two tentacles before the sub kicked up a lot of debris and got it to leave.
It's still a cool video, though.
Here's a mirror site hosting this one and a few other octopi videos.
Link (pops)
I work for the Vancouver Island newspaper (TC) and we ran this in yesterdays newspaper, so yes slashdot may reach further but the locals saw this a good 48hrs prior.
{ Pillar candles great for when the power fails and you cant see the keyboard..
> The most correct plural is octopodes, but I've never heard anyone use it.
Yes. The -us isn't the familiar Latin ending. It's the Latinized form of Greek okto-pous "eightfoot".
The root of pous is ped- or pod-, familiar in such terms as orthopedics, "foot straightening"; tetrapod, "fourfoot"; Oedipus (Greek Oidipous), "Clubfoot".
The seemingly strange pous from pod- is an example of the common linguistic phenomenon called compensatory lengthening, the result of the nominative singular derivation pod- + -s. The Greek nominitive plural would be pod- + -es, hence "octopodes".
I now return you to our slightly less anal retentive context...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade