Octopus Read Online Free PDF Page B

Olive’s eggs hatching on a night dive on September 22, 209 days after the eggs were laid. While a few of the paralarvae swam out of the den during the daytime, Olive blew most of them out of the den at night. She may have been causing them to hatch at night by blowingstrong water jets over them. At this point, she was totally white, almost translucent. Her skin had several large white ulcers on her arms and mantle, and it had the appearance of rotting away. She was totally unresponsive to divers, even when touched, devoting her remaining energy to her eggs.
    The peak of the paralarval hatching was October 7, 224 days after she laid her eggs. Divers saw the last hatchlings on October 31, and at that time there were virtually no eggs left unhatched. Olive was dead on November 6, 254 days after laying her first eggs. Her body was about 6 ft. (2 m) from the opening of her den, being fed on by two sea stars. Nothing goes to waste in the sea, and scavengers are always waiting for the chance to clean up dead bodies.
    The precise timing of her death to the last hatching of her eggs is remarkable. Although it sounds anthropocentric, it looked as though she clung to life until she knew her eggs hatched. It is also remarkable that she was able to bring her eggs to successful hatching considering her circumstances. Her den was located within Seattle’s inner harbor, next to the outlet of a river that flows through an industrial area. The river and the harbor were once very polluted. Her success may be a testament to our modern pollution clean up efforts and awareness of the necessity of keeping pollutants out of rivers and bays, or it may simply reflect the durability of this female and her eggs.
    Olive was visited almost daily by curious divers. Her home was Washington state’s most popular dive site, used by many dive classes as their first open-water dive each week, since the location is sheltered from storms and their waves. Her success despite all these disturbances is also a testimonial to her dedication to the eggs.
    The saga of Olive the Octopus brooding her eggs in Seattle’s harbor was covered by several local newspapers and magazines. The reading public was entranced with her story and saddened by her death. The diving community also mourned her death. One dive magazine ran an article about her, “So Long, Olive, We Barely Knew You,” lamenting the short life span of octopuses.
    Many octopus eggs take a long time to develop. While the 224 days Olive’s eggs took to hatch is a bit more than the about six months reported for the species, this egg development period is by no means the longest for an octopus species. Egg development time is dependent on the temperature of the water: the colder the water, the longer the development period within the egg. Eggs of the giant Pacific octopus in California have a four-monthdevelopment, while those in Seattle or Alaska may take seven to eight months to hatch. The spoon-arm octopus of the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean lives on the continental slope, in water that is 600 to 1200 ft. (200 to 400 m) deep and a temperature of about 35°F (2°C). James has raised this type of little octopus through several generations, and he has found that their eggs take over a year to hatch out into benthic juveniles, ready to take up the bottom-dwelling existence of their parents.
    Most deep-water octopuses have large eggs with long development periods that hatch out looking like their parents. This is logical when you consider where they live. There is nothing small like plankton in the ocean depths for the paralarvae to eat, so they must be large enough to be able to eat larger organisms. Some moderately deep-water fish spawn eggs that float to the surface waters, where their hatchlings live in the plankton, only to swim deeper when they are older and large enough to undertake such a vertical migration. But they may only migrate down a thousand feet or so. Other