18 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] thread
Another nursery was recently found off the coast of California, 3,200 meters (1750 fathoms) underwater: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37350648
In a little hideaway, beneath the waves?
She's so heavy...
...she's my mother.

(The Hollies, sort of)

I appreciate you converting meters to fathoms.
It is also 15.9 furlongs.
(comment deleted)
But it's it 20000 leagues?
(comment deleted)
Obligatory reference to a sci-fi novel: The Mountain in the Sea. It rides all the zeitgeists to great effect.
The editing and music choice for the video are both incredible.
Secret society of cephalopods
This discovery and the video are amazing but I must admit I felt a bit conflicted when I read that the team that was there, ostensibly to observe, started erecting structures to see which ones the octopuses might want to lay eggs in. Doesn’t that seem a bit invasive?
I admit that I watched the video, and have followed octopus discoveries for decades now - having had my own youthful enlightenment on the subject in regions bearing blue rings - and found myself internally compelled to find some way that we can develop our communication abilities with octopus in similar ways to the sapien research that has happened in our zeitgeist.

I truly believe we can "sign-language" with cuttlefish, if we try. We can more than likely attempt to involve ourselves with the Octopus villages/covens we keep finding all over the place - they are social creatures, just perhaps not in the littoral species .. - and we should _really_ stop eating them. In the same way we don't eat monkeys.

Anyway, these compulsions in my case are internal, and I dare not express just how much I love these creatures and want them to be a part of the human experiences because every time I have encountered them in their world, it has made my world even more amazing, too.

The question of whether we should cross the human/octupus non-communication gap is a deep and serious one. Think about it next time you find one on the reef.