Thread by @blprnt

Here's my 🐙 in one clean thread:

When I was about 22 I worked as a naturalist at the Vancouver Aquarium (@vanaqua). As well as talking to people about the exhibits, putting on puppet shows, narrating beluga whale sessions, etc., I was on the dive team...

Which meant that 1 or 2 times a day I'd be in the water w/ the sharks or the belugas, or most relevant to #WorldOctopusDay, the PNW (Pacific Northwest) tank.

One day on my way into the water, the aquarist who took care of the tank told me that he'd seen some parasites on the 🐙

(This was a male Giant Pacific Octopus, Enteroctupus dofleini, a species that can grow bigger than 200lbs, with an armspan of > 20 feet. I'm going by memory right now, but I'd guess this particular octopus was about 30lbs, and about 12 feet arm-to-arm)

It was typically about a 10% chance of seeing the octopus on any given dive, so I didn't give it much thought. But sure enough he came out.

He ended up just within arm's reach & I could see a few of the parasites that'd been mentioned. So I reached out & plucked one off.

The octopus DID NOT LIKE. He flashed an alarm colour and jetted off to his den. I thought this was the end of the story.

It wasn't.

The next day, I was in the tank for another dive & the octupus came out and creepy toward me. Again, I reached out & plucked off a parasite.

This time he did not swim away. He flashed an alarm colour, but stayed nearby. So I plucked off another parasite. He stayed.

(A pause to remember this animal was 12+ feet arm to arm. His tentacles were as thick as an adult's arm and 5x as strong)

I sort of half-sat half floated on the bottom, and he very slowly crawled up into my lap. I had a 30lb octopus IN MY LAP.

That day I managed to pluck of three or four of them (they were little white worms, very common on octopus you might see in the world)

The next day something magical happened.

As soon as I got into the water, the octopus came out of his den. By the time I was at the bottom of the tank, he was there waiting for me.

Again, I plucked off a couple of worms. No more alarm colour. He came closer to me and I reached out and stroked one of his arms.

This whole time the octupus was *emoting*. Cycling through colours, his skin changing texture from moment to moment. And those eyes!

I'll never forget the feeling as he reached one of his tentacles out, up along my arm to the bare skin on my neck.

An octupus' eyes are structurally very similar to our own, you can really feel the sensation of 'eye contact'. He was looking right at me.

We dove with small air tanks, so after about 10m I had to extract myself from his tentacles and swim to the surface, exhilerated.

For the next month, every time I'd get in the water, that octopus would emerge from his den and meet me at 'our spot'.

He didn't do this for any of the other divers. Just me. And he would know it was me the very second I got in the water. (Smell? Breathing?)

I'd occasionally pluck a parasite, if I saw one, but mostly we'd just spend time together. He'd let me touch him & I'd let him touch me.

Alas, nothing lasts forever. One day I got into the tank and the octopus didn't come out. Maybe he'd learned all he needed to know about me?

Still it was nice to know, every time I was in that water, that I was there with a friend. Even if he was in his den.

Octopuses are terminal spawners with short lifespans. This particular one died two years later in 1999(?)

I think about him a lot. And I truly think I know something of what it feels like to make friends with an alien.

❤️🐙

I should probably mention I wrote a book.

It has no 🐙 in it, but you can hear about the time I went to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico in the sub that discovered the Titanic.

Also you can completely reimagine how you think about data.

bookshop.org/a/7000/9781250…

I should probably *also* mention that I have a podcast (who saw that coming?!?)

It's about the human stories behind some of birding's most unusual checklists:

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/onc…

New episode on Friday!