Marine Life Identification Perth WA
Shore Diving
Cephalopods
A cephalopod is any member of the molluscan class Cephalopoda (Greek plural Κεφαλόποδα (kephalópoda); "head-feet"). These exclusively marine animals are characterized by bilateral body symmetry, a prominent head, and a set of arms or tentacles (muscular hydrostats) modified from the primitive molluscan foot... (Wikipedia)
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Octopus
Blue Ringed Octopus
(Hapalochlaena maculosa)
This little fella was taken on a night dive at Ammo Jetty, in approx. 1.5 meters of water and about 10 meters from the shoreline (watch your toes).
The Blue Ringed Octopus was in no distress during this period so it did not show off its illuminous blue rings, however you can see a slight blue colouring to its tentacles.
Gloomy Octopus
(Octopus tetricus)
Ammo Jetty is Octopus Alley, with a keen eye you can pretty much see these Gloomy Octopuss on every dive.
Between October through to February is when you will see a lot of juvenile Octopus at the jetty, these things are tiny.
This is an excellent couple of pictures of a small Gloomy Octopus feeding, click on the left picture for a close up.
Right side picture shows this Octopus keeping a tight hold of this fish after a small bit of teasing by my Buddy Owen.
You can see clearly by this first picture how small these things are. There appears no strinkingly obvious difference between a juvenile and a fully grown occy other than its size, thats why I used my hand to show scale in this picture.
This was an eery little moment at Ammo Jetty. There were two Octopus that did not change its colouration no matter how close I got, at first I though they were dead, but they were just sitting hugging each other. You can see the second Octopus's tentacle just wrapping around by the left eye. I am still unsure what is happening here, if anything.
Squeezed................
One of my favourite things is how an Octopus can crawl into the smallest of spaces, and not only that but how well they blend into their surroundings.
Photographs taken at Rockingham DT, Robbs Jetty, Point Peron and Ammo Jetty.
IF YOU'RE NOT GOING DOWN: THEN WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU GOING
