Octopus Mistakenly Makes a Home Out of Plastic Cup. Diver Convinces It to Trade the Cup for a Shell
One of the human’s worst inventions has to be plastic, whose ramifications not only affect life on land but also creatures deep underwater. Diver and YouTuber Pall Sigurdsson (@PallSigurdsson) documented an eye-opening experience during one of his dives in December 2018. He captured a small coconut octopus taking shelter in a plastic cup as a replacement for natural alternatives. Sigurdsson anticipated how this minuscule change would impact a bigger aquatic food chain harming several other creatures in the run, and made an effort.
The diver revealed that he and his team found the octopus 20 meters below sea level. After spotting the octopus in a cup, he was determined to replace the creature’s plastic home with a real one. In the video’s description, the expert stated, “We spent a whole dive and most of our air saving this octopus from what was bound to be a cruel fate.” Coconut octopuses are said to be born with an instinct to protect themselves by taking shelter in a mobile home, which is usually found to be coconut or clam shells.
In the initial seconds, Sigurdsson briefly interacted with the octopus as the latter extended one of its tentacles to touch his hand. He then offered a few shell options to the octopus but the efforts were unsuccessful as the molluscs are known to be highly picky about their shells. After providing the little creature with many options as the team of divers searched for appropriate quality shells, the octopus finally accepted a hollowed clam shell. It slowly moved out of the plastic cup to take up its new home. The diver feared that the octopus was not going to let go of the plastic cup shell.
Sigurdsson theorized that even though the plastic cup temporarily protected the octopus, a passing eel or flounder could easily swallow it up with the octopus, killing both the prey and predator. The description added, “or weakening it to a point where it will be soon eaten by an even bigger fish” affecting the larger food chain cycle. Finally, Sigurdsson helped the octopus with the leftover shell to completely protect it from predators ensuring its survival. The video has amassed over 20 million views since it was shared and was filmed in Lembeh, Indonesia. Plastic pollution in oceans and seas has become a global crisis and requires collective action to mitigate the catastrophic risks.
It is estimated that billions of pounds of plastic found in water bodies make up about 40% of the world’s ocean surfaces, according to a Center for Biological Diversity report. Hawaiian monk seals and Pacific loggerhead sea turtles are often entangled in plastic litter in addition to 700 other species. Anyone merely aware of the plastic problem might have heard about The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is really a gyre of plastic debris in the north-central Pacific Ocean. The size of the infamous garbage patch happens to be the size of a small country. Another 20% of the plastic pollution is caused by industrial fishing which uses large amounts of plastic resources to catch fish and marine creatures, per a UNESCO report.
You can follow @PallSigurdsson on YouTube for more videos on marine and aquatic life.