Overland Octopus (Octopus rubescens) at Moss Beach

For whatever reason, it always seems that the low tides in the spring offer the best opportunity of encountering a Red Octopus (Octopus rubescens) when tidepooling. I'm sure there are a number of reasons for this...the exceptionally low tides...the timing of the tides early in the morning after what I would expect might be a long night of hunting...maybe even the particularly strong pull of the moon. All I pretend to know is that between Easter and July 4th it seems like I encounter the greatest number of octopods at the beach...and even that great number isn't so great...it's a rare treat to encounter one. Especially when you've pretty much given up and are trudging back to shore in order to potentially dig a brittle star (even more elusive in my mind than the cephalopod sort) out of the sand, and all of the sudden there one is dragging itself along over the seaweed. On this particular weekend of April 28, I happened upon two octopi...one no bigger than your average grape and the other would probably have fit inside a large (but not jumbo) hen's egg. This is that one. On the night previous to this capture, I was watching footage of the deep sea "Dumbo" octopus (genus Grimpoteuthis) on some nature program, and a fellow viewer was puzzled by the elephantine aspersion. I'm not exactly sure what it is....probably the placement of the eyes above the grasping tentacles, but octopi almost always remind me of elephants...so the Dumbo octopus makes perfect sense to me.

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