Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
One winter day we were out collecting fish for the bay study, and I
came up from below to find our technician trying to extract himself
from an octopus. It was a big one, with about a four-foot reach.
He'd picked up a pile of debris that came up with the net, and the
octopus had immediately crawled up the sleeve of his raincoat and
onto his shoulder. So he's lifting one tentacle off, then two, and runs
out of hands. I went back there and started lifting them of too, but
we didn't have enough hands between the two of us to compete
with the octopus's eight. In the end, we had to take the tech's
raincoat off and drop the whole tangle in the water until the
octopus let go.
RANDY BAXTER, FISHERIES BIOLOGIST,
CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND GAME
