Orange County Register

The Dana Point Ocean Institute’s only octopus carefully tended her enormous mass of eggs for two months, and the results are explosive: hundreds of baby octopuses hatching since Monday.

“They’re still hatching as we speak,” Julianne Steers, the institute’s aquarist, said Thursday. “They’re bouncing around now.”

The tiny creatures are about 4 millimeters in length. Steers said she’s doing everything possible to keep them alive, and that some are already showing signs of feeding (photos by Steve Zylius, the Orange County Register).

But overall, the prognosis for both mother and babies is grim. Most of the offspring probably will not survive, she said; those that do will be kept at the institute or offered to other facilities with aquarium collections.

The mother — who has never received a name, in keeping with Steers’ desire to remind visitors that they are viewing wild animals, not pets — is a two-spot octopus, a species that only lives about two years.

And Steers said they are “terminal breeders.” In other words, the creatures die soon after breeding is finished.

Females stop eating after laying their eggs, eventually just wasting away.

“The mother will pass on,” Steers said. “Her days are numbered.”

In case you were wondering, there is no father octopus hanging about. The female was collected in the wild (Steers has the proper permits) in September 2007.

“The octopus has been in captivity a good year,” Steers said. “Thankfully, octopuses have the ability to store sperm till they’re ready to use it.” (Steers is shown at left, tending one of her fish tanks.)

The unnamed octopus has been a favorite of children who visit the institute, which hosts a variety of educational programs and has a large collection of living marine life on display. And Steers worked with her to learn more about octopus intelligence.

They’re smart creatures; if presented with a jar with a solid lid, this octopus could unscrew it to get at the treat inside.

But in an odd insight into the mind of an octopus, Steers noticed a very different reaction if the lid had even small holes in it.

The octopus would just thrust her soft, amorphous arms through the holes rather than bothering to screw it open.

Click here to see a slide show of octopus photos

Read Julianne Steers’ blog.

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