Octopuses have been caught on camera during nighttime walking out of the water on the Ceredigion coast in Wales (UK).
More than 20 intelligent cephalopods were seen crawling out of the water shortly after 10 p.m. when a manager of a local tour company, accompanied by a group of tourists had just returned from an excursion after sunset. “They were coming out of the water and crawling on the beach, but we don’t really know why,” said Brett Jones, owner of the tour company called SeaMôr Dolphin Watching Boat Trips.” Maybe it’s because the sea has been rough recently, but I’ve never seen anything like it before, they were walking on the tips of their tentacles, ” he added.
This is not the first time octopuses have been spotted emerging from the water. In 2011, an octopus was filmed crawling on dry land in the Fitzgerald Marine Preserve in San Mateo County, California (USA). In a 2015 episode of BBC documentary The Hunt, footage of an octopus (abdopus-type) crawling between pools scooped into the rock, in an attempt to find prey, was revealed.
According to Julian Finn, a specialist in marine invertebrates at Museums Victoria in Australia, it is not uncommon for octopuses that live near shorelines to cross dry expanses. It’s just that most octopuses are nocturnal, so unlikely to be seen by humans when they go for a walk out of the water.
As to why they do it, scientists believe it is in order to search for potential prey. When the tide goes out: “Many species of octopus emerge to hunt in the puddles left by the ebbing tide,” said Finn.
According to cephalopod expert Mandy Reid, changes in their environment could disorient them: for example, normal choppy waters would not be a problem for octopuses, but a big storm unleashing the seas could change their environment significantly enough to confuse them for a while.
Octopuses have gills, and therefore need to be in water to breathe, but they can survive for a short time out of water as long as their skin remains moist (a few minutes at most). So whatever the real reason that prompted them to walk out of the water, is a life threatening walk for them.
“ We rounded up the ones that were totally out of the water and put them back in the water at the end of the jetty, hoping to prevent them from getting stuck, ” Jones added. He also announced that he discovered several dead octopuses on the shores the next morning.
