I am one of those people that believe interaction with marine creatures can be entertaining, educational and an amazing experience. Hurting, harming or gross interference on the other hand is not acceptable and there is a constant debate on the “touch or don’t touch” topic. I often spend several hours a day submerged in a world filled with the most amazing creatures and often find interaction with them irresistible.
A few weeks back, whilst conducting a peak performance buoyancy dive, my student had removed a few weights from the BCD pockets and placed them on the sand. At the time we were close to an octopus home and I watched with amazement as the octopus and several klipfish become interested in the different colours of the weights.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFMOo5BTxGY&w=540]
I decided to go back when I had time and on Tuesday, after the student dives were over, I went to visit this octopus armed with my camera and some brightly coloured sweets. I set the camera up close to the octopus, hit the “record” button and dropped a few sweets near his home.
I spent 30 minutes there mesmerised by the behavior of the octopus, klipfish and barehead gobies. From this video clip I can say with certainty, octopus don’t eat sweets… They taste them and then spit them out. You can be sure I will be back there soon with something more palatable to an octopus!
Hehehe…maybe you should have tried a sucker!!! 🙂
Lovely post.