Tides & Islands 2012 - Day 11 - Occy tales part 1

Just down here on the intertidal reef in the Kimberley, where there's huge tidal ranges, we find this Octopus and it's of the genus Abdopus at the moment it's an undescribed species there's probably quite a few undescribed species in this part of the world, because no-one's really looked at them, but the amazing thing about this Octopus is that it comes out during the day when there's lots or predators around just on these intertidal flats, so it's really good at camouflage, it's really good at blending in with the environment, disappearing so that predators can't see it there, and it actively hunts through these pools so when the tide goes out as you can see there's lots of pools that are separated by areas of dry land and this octopus can move between those, hunting the fish that are caught. In some of those pools there's also moray eels and predators and this octopus is good at dropping an arm and growing it back should a predator grab it so it's really well adapted to forage in this environment nobody's really come out here to look for cephalopods, for octopus and squid so we've got no idea what's here originally we thought there was a few species but even just in this group of octopus alone, there's probably half-a-dozen undescribed species so to protect this region and to really understand it, we first need to know what's here, and this survey is a good start for that where we're doing a good assessment of what species are around and finding lots of new things it's crucial that we keep looking and it's great to find an octopus like this one