“Imagine a life spent riding currents, never touching solid earth,” says Schmidt Ocean Institute on Instagram alongside a captivating video of a pelagic octopus drifting along. "You’d have to be different than others of your kind so you can easily hide in plain sight.”
The octopus was gliding along 1,047 metres deep when pilots of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) caught it on camera during the 2023 Octopus Odyssey expedition.
Although its bright orange hue makes it stand out to us, it may actually help the creature hide because orange isn’t visible between 200 and 1,000 metres deep, Schmidt Ocean Institute says. They add that MBARI Senior Scientist Bruce Robison, a midwater ecologist, thinks the species is Japetella diaphana.
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Top image and video credit: Schmidt Ocean Institute
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