Octopus
It was out first night dive of the week with Whitey, Max and Denise. We had been out for about 3 days and done some fabulous diving and spear fishing. We were all comfortable diving with each other and at a perfect location to dive off the back of the boat for a night dive. We usuallystart a night dive as the sun is going down. 6:30 is night time – right? We find it difficult to do really late night diving as we are just too tired. As we prepared our dive gear, Denise looked at me and said ‘you’re taking your spear gun aren’t you?’ I thought to myself ‘Well I wasn’t going to’ but instead I said to Denise ‘Sure. If you are, I am’. So we took a giant stride in the water, Denise and I with spear guns and Max with the yellow game bag to carry the catch.
Arrow Crab
It was approximately 10 minutes into the dive in 40 feet of water. Max was sticking with me but Denise wasn’t far away. We were close enough to the lights of the boat. Max saw that Denise had something and motioned to me to follow her to help. As we neared, we saw it was an octopus. Denise was thinking that Whitey had said he really wanted some ‘ceviche de pulpo’ and she wanted to keep the Captain happy. Max and I are thinking ‘what in the world?’ She had pinned the octopus with herspear and it had immediately climbed onto the spear. When she saw the bag she carried the octopus over. At this point, the octopus has all of its tentacles wrapped around the spear as well as Denise’s hand and wrist. Max was holding the bag open but the guy was not going in easily. Max did not have gloves on where as Denise and I did. The octopus moved a couple tentacles onto Max’s bare hand. She immediately freaked and let go of the bag. Then the octopus is half in the bag and on Denise’s hand and arm. But as Denise pulled the spear gun away from the cling-on she dropped the gun.
Banded Coral Shrimp
Tarpon
While Denise is still struggling with Oscar the Octopus, Max is staying away not wanting those suction things on her, I thought I should help retrieve Denise’s gun before it is lost in the dark. Remember, we are in 30-40 feet of water, it is dark except our flashlights. Earlier I had caught a lobster. When I catch lobster, I find that it is easiest to grab it with my gloved hands, twist the tail off and put it in my BCD pocket and discard the body. So as I am grabbing Denise’s spear gun, I see a lobster out of the corner of my eye. It is slowly crawling across the sea floor. As I got closer and ready to grab it, I saw it had no tail! A tail less lobster? Do-do-do-do! A bit of a twilight zone moment there.
I slowly ascended back to Denise who had finally gotten the octopus in the bag. She handed it to Max indicating that she should hold tight to the bag. We continued looking around for another 10 minutes. We had had enough hunting and were just enjoying the different things you can see at night on a reef – a sleeping cocooned parrot fish, huge tarpon with their silver dollar scales illuminated with our flashlights and tons of sea urchins and sea slugs. I got back on board the boat, glanced in the net bag, saw the octopus (a grey blob) and placed the bag in a bucket to deal with later. It was only after rinsing and putting away our gear, when Denise emptied the bag on the cockpit floor that she saw there was just a rock! We were all aghast. This must have been a rock that the octopus had grabbed on to as it was first grabbed from the floor. The smart guy had slithered through the smallest little hole in the bag without anyone knowing it before they got out of the water.
