Chapter 7

 

 

By the next day, Tatiana and David have selected several new potential study sites along the bay on Google Maps. Jennifer and I set out with Tatiana in one of the pickup trucks to scout a site half an hour’s drive south, nearly to the bottom of the heart shape that is Moorea. We’re looking for a channel that brings nutrients to shallows carpeted with the sort of rubble where octopuses like to den.

On the way, we stop to investigate a lagoon—a shallow stretch of salt water separated from the sea by a sandbank or coral reef. The three of us wade out. But we don’t even need to get in over our knees before we reach our conclusion: “It’s another Sea Cucumber World,” says Tatiana. “Let’s go.”

We drive on until we find a pullover near our site, just past a little village called Ha’apiti. “Looks very shallow,” observes Jennifer. But Tatiana wants to take a look. We wade out. We don’t even bother to bring our fins, it’s so shallow. Within two minutes, still in water only calf-deep, Tatiana bends down and picks up a crab shell. “This is good octopus habitat,” Tatiana announces. “This is going to be a good place—let’s look.” Two minutes later Tatiana turns toward us and beckons:

“Big octopus here!”

Jennifer and I hurry over. It’s too shallow to swim, so we walk—trying not to stir up the muddy bottom or twist our ankles on the coral and rock beneath our feet.

The octopus is out hunting, probing the crevices in the rubble with the tips of its arms. It doesn’t seem at all upset by the three humans looming over it. The animal is the biggest we’ve seen yet—the head and mantle are bigger than a grapefruit—and it shows us an astonishing combination of colors. Covered with papillae, the top exactly matches the yellow, green, and brown of the algae and seaweed here. But the arms are red with black spots! White eyes with black horizontal pupils swivel to look up at us.

“Oh, God, octopus—you’re beautiful!” cries Tatiana. “Hi, beautiful guy!”

The octopus isn’t far from its den. Just a foot away, we see a perfect little cave among the rubble—and just outside its entrance, the midden, littered with clam shells and the claws and carapace of a crab stretching five inches across.

“Let’s do the personality test right now!” says Jennifer. Tatiana’s and her slates are back at the car; this was just a scouting expedition, and nobody expected to find an octopus in four minutes! But I have my slate, and we remember the protocol. On our approach, the octopus does not retreat or change color, but looks up at us. When Tatiana touches the animal with the pencil, the octopus moves away slowly, reddens, spreads its arms, and continues exploring holes for prey.

The octopus withdraws its third right arm and Tatiana sees the tip clearly. Now she knows the sex: this is a female, because she has suckers all the way to the tip. A male would not, for his third right arm has a specialized tip called the ligula (LIG-you-la) that he uses to place a sperm packet inside the female’s mantle opening, like tucking a gift into a pocketbook. When Jennifer collects the shells around the burrow, the female continues foraging, but always keeps an eye on the scientist. Perhaps the octopus assumes the human is hunting for prey too!

 

 

It takes Jennifer more than a minute to collect all the shells from around the site, more than fit in her collection bucket. We stuff the overflow, including a sand crab carapace six inches across, into a Ziploc bag. (Later, we discover we still didn’t get it all: when Keith and I return to the site that afternoon, we find another huge carapace of a sand crab within six feet of the den. Or maybe the octopus had just consumed another snack in the interim!)

“Looks like she’s been in this den for a long period,” says Tatiana. Because octopuses usually move to new dens every few days, the hunting must be exceptionally good in this area. The octopus is beautiful, healthy, and strong—like Tatiana’s mother. So Tatiana names the animal after her: Cassia. Tatiana takes a photo with her underwater camera for our records, and to email to her mom.

“This octopus is wonderfully bold!” exclaims Jennifer. As we mark the den with a buoy, Cassia uses her funnel to blow a small volcano of sand toward us. Not wanting to harass her, we leave her behind and explore the rest of the area.

Jennifer is impressed. “Look at all these wonderful caves! This is a perfect habitat! There are lots of crabs, there are probably clams in the sand, and so many perfect hiding places.”

As a graduate student, Jennifer had explored, in the lab, how octopuses pick their homes. “What impressed me most was the octopuses seemed to have an image in their mind of the best home—as we do,” she said. “I’d like to have a home with a sheltered porch, or a spare bedroom, or near a good school. But unlike in a laboratory, in the real world of the sea, the octopus has to take the best it can get, and then fix it up.”

 

An octopus probes crevices with the tips of its arms.

 

 

A hawksbill sea turtle.

 

This may be what Cassia was just doing. Octopuses frequently excavate sand by using their funnels like leaf blowers. They also bring rocks and shells to the front of their dens for added security, sometimes carrying them for quite a distance. (In response to a predator near the den, an octopus may hold up a shell or rock in front of it like a shield.) And some octopuses even clip the algae in front of their homes, the way a homeowner would trim a hedge.

We wade on, and Jennifer starts finding dens everywhere. “Now, here’s one for sure,” she says, pointing out a little grotto. “Just because it’s not occupied now doesn’t mean it wasn’t occupied last week—or that it won’t be next week, or even tomorrow!”

Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the island, past Cook’s Bay, Keely and David are checking out another site that looked promising on Google Earth. They find white sand flecked with living corals, shallows alive with colorful fish, easy swimming, and comfortable wading—the sort of place, Keely later tells me, where honeymooners would love to snorkel.

“But we don’t want that,” she says. “Honeymooners’ paradise is not for octopus!” No, we need to be scraping our chests on sharp edges of dead coral and getting hit in the face with stocky, thorny, pinecone-y algae while struggling to swim in two feet of water.

So David and Keely leave paradise. Determined to find octopuses, they head back to a spot near Bent Palm, just east of our first study site, Church Copse.

Sure enough, the shallows there are full of sharp coral skeletons and annoying algae. Keely and David split up. Bumping their knees and scraping their fingers on coral skeletons, both are finding crab and clam shells. Keely starts following what she thinks might be a foraging trail—a succession of trash a hunting octopus left, snacking as it traveled and leaving the shells behind. But octopuses prefer to consume their takeout meals in the safety of their homes, and Keely hopes the trail will lead to an octopus in its den.

After fifteen minutes of looking, David signals to Keely that it’s time to go back. A team of French students will be waiting for the other truck to return. Darn! Keely just glimpsed a hawksbill turtle swimming near the edge of the channel, and hates to leave. Reluctantly, she turns to swim toward shore, keeping her eyes on the rocky bottom as she snorkels, just in case.

Rock, dead coral, algae, another rock. And then: shells. Lying by a rock—with another rock lying in front of it at an odd angle. “I thought, ‘That rock wouldn’t just be sitting there,’” Keely tells me later. “Somebody must have put it there.” She dives to investigate, and, sure enough, the rock partially blocks a hole. And in the hole . . .

“OCTOPUS!” she calls to David. He swims over. They high-five. And since Tatiana named her octopus after her mother, so does Keely. And the name really fits, especially since with her discovery, we have not only a second study site, but a third: Joy!