This giant red octopus can be seen at the California Academy of Sciences.
A week ago on Tuesday morning, a co-worker and I were able to go behind the scenes and visit with the Giant Red Octopus and his trainer. To get to his tank, we had to climb a ladder onto a deck surrounding one wall of the tank. There was a detachable wall blocking off the tank from the desk that was covered in astro-turf. Nancy, who works with the octopus, explained that an octopus can’t find suction on astro-turf and therefore cannot get the footing to climb out of the tank. There was also a lip of the tank out of public view. The “octopus garden” was displayed there as dozens of crab shells picked clean.
Nancy was awaiting a crab shipment later that day. She uses live crab as enrichment for the octopus. She also has puzzles made out of PVC piping she hides fish in for the octopus to solve. The octopus gets many visits, much like the one me and my co-worker were on, for enrichment as well.
Nancy took down the detachable wall and we came face to face with the octopus we had only every seen through glass. There were a couple of things I learned that day:
A giant red octopus can drench you in 10 seconds flat if he wants to. The siphon on an octopus is similar to gills on a fish and jettisons water in and out. When he was slightly above the water line, the siphon dumped about two gallons of water over the side and I was directly in the path. It took all day to dry out my jeans.