Mugged by a Giant Octopus

Fantastic dive sunday with my buddy Rob. We sat 4 Giant Pacific Octopus at Point Lobos State Reserve in Carmel, CA. One of them was quite interactive.

Full gallery here:

http://www.baue.org/images/galleries/v/local/BetosOctopus/

Investigating my camera.

My buddy Rob's View

Rob gets the treatment

Giant Pacific Octopus

More Giant Pacific Octopus

Clinton

Great shots - looks like you had a lot of fun with that GPO

In the third pic, what is that floating above the upper arm? it looks like the octo took off someone's hood!

Thanks!

That's the port cover for Rob's Camera. I think it's clipped to one of his strobe arms.

Clinton

Great! did you let him use the camera for a while?

'Wow' what a great experience and fabulous pictures to look back on.

Gary.

Is the same GPO that just popped-up on a Yahoo News feature video? The story cited Pt. Lobos as the location where a GPO was filmed attaching itself to a diver's camera gear.

-Tinman

Pretty certain this was a different octopus. The other encounter was in Bluefish Cove 3-400 meters west of where we were. It's possible an octopus could move that far in a week but the one that made the news appeared to me to be missing a chunk of one arm which wasn't the case with this guy.

Clinton

Cool photos!

-Tinman

What a fantastic experience, and great series of images.

It sure looks friendly, I have to wonder if it had eyes for your flash arms or something lol

Wow - I have always wanted to dive with these beauties, the octopuses in the Med and Asia are such - well.... pussies. Great shots and experience. Definitely on my list ....

Great set of images showing a crime in progress!

Seriously, very cool series!