Exciting news everyone, the Sapphire Coast Marine Discovery Centre has not one but two new octopuses. A beautiful little girl gloomy octopus and a dashing young male pale octopus!!

Since the sad passing of everyone’s favourite star Octavia we have had an empty tank as a sad reminder but now we have a new wild girl to spice things up. And our young man has a new tank set up to call home.

Ellen Soroka and Morticia the gloomy octopus

The gloomy octopus (Octopus tetricus) has been called ‘Morticia’ or Tish for short. A gloomy name to match the gloomy title of her species.

She was named by our wonderful work experience student Ellen Soroka who assisted our Marine Education officer Jillian Riethmuller to catch her off Aslings Beach in Eden.

The male pale octopus (Octopus pallidus) has been named Joxer the Mighty.  Named after a funny character from the popular TV series Xena: Warrior Princess. He has a wonderful theme song if you look him up on youtube!

We would like to thank the Merimbula Aquarium and Michael McMaster for their generous donation of our pale octopus.

This is our first ever pale octopus at the Marine Discovery Centre  and we have had a number of the gloomy before but we have only ever had females of this species. There is no clear answer as to why this is, if anyone has an answer or possible hypothesis for this question please email us at education@sapphirecoastdiscovery.com.au