Earlier in February of this year, a female Gloomy Octopus – Octopus tetricus – was delivered to the centre. She soon became a star attraction as she was very active and engaging, often coming up to the side of the tank whenever visitors to the centre arrived. We had a naming competition for her, and after several entries called for the same name, she was christened “Octavia”.

In early May, Octavia began exhibiting ‘brooding’ behaviour; taking rocks and shells to her section of the tank and covering herself up almost completely. She wasn’t taking food from us nor was she coming out from her lair the way she use to. We kept a close eye on her, and about two weeks later (May 10th),  we discovered Octavia had in fact deposited strings of small eggs to the roof of her cave, or lair.

Strings of eggs hang from the octopus's lair

We waited and watched, and watched and waited until to our delight we noticed the first hatchlings in the tank. The hundreds of babies that first hatched were very active, although numbers dwindled despite another lot of eggs hatching three days later. We fed the babies with artemia, (brine shrimp), supplied to us by the generous people over at the Merimbula Wharf and Aquarium. We were able to observe the babies feeding on the shrimp. They would launch forward and grab the tiny shrimp in their tiny tentacles. They would also regularly launch at each other  showing all the signs of sibling rivalry.

We returned some of the hatchlings to the sea to give them a fighting chance of survival. Sadly, the reported mortality rate in the wild is high. Also occuring in the wild is the imminent death of the mother octopus,  possibly due to starvation (the mother rarely leaves her lair while she sits inside oxygenating her eggs)

However, to date, the SCMDC’s newest Octomum is still alive although she hides in her lair all of the time now and continues to cover the front of her home with rocks and shells. She is refusing frozen food but seems to be partial to a live crab or two and gobbles them up much to the delight of the watching crowd.

The octobabies just looked like tiny blobs of white bouncing around in the tank, we were keen to get a closer look at them, so we scooped one up and placed it under the Micro-Eye projector microscope and hurriedly took some photos while it darted in and around and all over the place!  We tried other techniques including using the macro lenses on our cameras, placing one specimen in a test tube, and under the microscope – so teeny tiny, they weren’t the best behaved for a photo shoot!

Baby octopus day 2

Baby octopus day 3

We were sad that none of the young survived but through our research we have discovered that it is not easy to raise this species. There is research currently being conducted into rearing the young as the Octopus tetricus is an important commercial species. If you want to know more about the work that WA Fisheries are doing with this species follow the link below.

http://www.nmdc.com.au/2011/07/octopus-aquaculture-growing-success/

Hundreds of baby octopus bobbing around inside the tank