Does that octopus… have a gun?!
Octopus Sharpshooter
There was no one on the Our Oceans team who could have imagined what we discovered when filming on the sandy shallows of the indo pacific an octopus who armed itself with a gun! We saw it once by chance, but would we ever see it again? And would it be possible to film such surprising and mind blowing behavior?
In order to capture the unique sequences which appear in Our Oceans, our teams spent extremely long durations with our lead characters. One of the most astonishing tales unfolded as Roger Munns, our series DoP, immersed himself with a veined octopus in Indonesia, in a most unusual environment.
In Our Oceans, we were determined to show the oceans as they are today, and therefore never turned our cameras away from the impact of humanity where we saw it. So when we discovered a veined octopus living in the litter-strewn seabed in the Indo-Pacific, our lenses captured the stark reality of how our waste has integrated into the natural world of many marine creatures.
Roger was surprised to see the clever octopus exploring the trash for the best place to hide and so equipped with his rebreather, which enabled him to remain totally silent and alongside the octopus for hours at a time, he began to film, and discovered that this particular octopus was more ingenious than anyone could have ever imagined.
Leveraging specialized underwater grips and sliders, Roger and his team meticulously documented the octopus’ life within the trash, recording how she cleverly used the litter as camouflage when hunting her crab prey. But after trying to conceal herself within a metal can, a glass bottle and a plastic cup, she finally sought a more ‘natural’ alternative, finding two matching halves of a shell to disguise herself as a clam. And this is where the story took an unexpected turn.
how over 100 hours with one sharp shooter octopus lead to an Our oceans first
_edited.jpg)
NEW SCIENCE
Another behavior that our Scientific Consultant Prof Steve Simpson was on hand to confirm was our sharpshooting octopus. Even while the team were still across the world in Indonesia, our Assistant Producer Katy Moorhead and DoP Roger Munns were looping Steve into some close up shots of their new octopus friend as they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Steve was quick to confirm that this was the first time an octopus had ever been seen shooting rocks and debris through its siphon. New to science, Steve and his students are currently watching through the footage with the ability to slow down the clips to really understand what’s going on so they can publish papers on the behavior.
Armed and dangerous?
When reviewing Roger’s footage at the end of the day, Our Oceans Assistant Producer Katy Moorhead spotted something extraordinary - faced with a large fish who was giving away the location of her clam hideout, the octopus fired a stone out of its breathing siphon, and hit the fish square on the face! It happened so quickly, that Roger had not even seen it through his viewfinder when underwater!
Was this a one off? Was the octopus really using its siphon like a pea shooter? Would they ever see it again? One thing was certain, they now had a new mission, to try and film this extraordinary behavior. It took Roger being immersed with the octopus for 110 hours over 3 weeks, but finally he was able to capture this never-before-seen behavior in full detail, revealing how the octopus gathered rocks and debris, loaded it into her siphon and then fired at passing predators!
IMPACT FILM: octopus outlaw
3 MIN 27 SECONDS
When the Our Oceans team spotted fish being chased off screen they took a closer look and discovered something incredible. A sharpshooting octopus! Join us on a deep dive into the incredible world of octopus intelligence.