Getting an unusual glimpse a lovable deep-sea creature, marine scientists this week filmed a rarely seen Dumbo octopus far below the ocean waters of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
The animal, which was swimming two miles below the surface near a dormant underwater volcano known as Davidson Seamount, takes its name from the large ear-like fins it has that are reminiscent of the young elephant in the 1941 animated Disney classic Dumbo.
The animal was spotted Tuesday by the unmanned remote vehicle Hercules as part of an expedition from the marine research ship Nautilus. Working with scientists from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the 209-foot ship is operated by the Ocean Exploration Trust, a non-profit group founded in 2008 by Robert Ballard, who is best known for his discovery of the Titanic in the 1980s.
Researchers began to ooh and ahh as they steered the remote vehicle, known as an ROV, toward the octopus.
“Hey, big fella,” said one. “He’s so cute.” “The world loves a Dumbo,” said another.
Dumbo octopuses, also known as umbrella octopuses, live deeper than almost any octopus on Earth, in cold waters between 10,000 and 13,000 feet deep, with some going as deep as 23,000 feet. They eat crabs, lobsters, krill, worms and other deep sea creatures, which they pounce on and swallow whole.
“They live all over the world, but in very deep water,” said marine biologist Chad King, a research specialist with the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, and lead scientist on the expedition. “You don’t come across them when you are scuba diving or swimming at the beach. It was a great interaction.”
They have been found off California, Australia, New Zealand, Oregon, the Philippines and New England. Most are about 1-2 feet long, although the biggest ever found was nearly 6 feet long. The octopus spotted on Tuesday was 2 feet long.
To swim, they flap their ear-like fins, and can easily move in any direction. They also can crawl along the sea floor with their eight tentacles or hover over it.
In recent months, the Nautilus has explored ocean areas off British Columbia, Washington and Hawaii. After a stop in San Diego Friday for repairs to undersea cables, the ship will continue exploring the waters off Monterey Bay through Wednesday, then head next month to the Channel Islands off Southern California.
Although the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary was established in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush, it originally did not include Davidson Seamount. The underwater mountain, more than 7,000 feet tall, has its peak about 4,000 feet below the ocean surface. It is located 80 miles southwest of Monterey.
“It’s the largest seamount on the U.S. West Coast,” King said. “It’s almost as tall as driving over Donner Summit in the Sierras. It’s not a little bump on the seafloor. It’s 26 miles long and eight miles wide. And we’ve only been there a few times.
“It’s like studying a football field in the dark, looking through a straw,” he added. “You can only see a few blades of grass and a few ants. Every dive produces something different.”
President George W. Bush expanded the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary boundaries to include it in 2008, after scientists with high-tech underwater subs found it to be a nationally significant underwater feature, thick with 10-foot tall coral forests, fields of colorful sponges, crabs and anemones that close like Venus flytraps,
President Donald Trump put the area on a list last year, however, to be considered for possible removal from sanctuary protections, which prohibit offshore oil drilling and underwater mining. No final decision has been made.
Also this week, scientists on the Nautilus expedition made another remarkable discovery in the same general area — a massive field of more than 1,000 deep-sea octopuses, clustered along the ocean floor.
Those creatures, known as Muusoctopus robustus, are a small deep-water octopus species that lacks an ink sac. The animals were near shimmering fluid seeps, a type of warm water from the rocky bottom next to Davidson Seamount. The creatures were sitting on eggs, some of which researchers believe can take two years or more to hatch. The only similar concentration was discovered off Costa Rica, the scientists said.
King said the area has been nicknamed “Octopus’s Garden,” a reference to the 1969 Beatles song written and sung by Ringo Starr.