Join me in the cold, dark, life-sustaining NE Pacific Ocean to discover the great beauty, mystery and fragility hidden there.

Posts tagged ‘northern vancouver’

Octo-brrr Octopus!

Image 1: Oct 29, 2011 Giant Pacific Octopus. Photo: Jackie Hildering.

It was 7.2° C (45° F)  in the ocean yesterday. Even in summer, I’ve only experienced a high of about 10° C. 

Typical for Northern Vancouver Island at this time of year, it was also windy enough for us to abort going out for a boat dive.  

Windy, chilly, drizzly, grey . . . what’s a cold-water scuba diver to do?

Get in the cold, dark green water however you can because you KNOW what kind of beauty and wonder are always to be found below the surface, even where you moor your boat! 

And indeed, under the dock, at only 6 m (20′) we found a Giant Pacific Octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini), curled up on a piling, incredibly tolerant of  this ecstatic marine educator. Octopuses are SUCH intelligent animals.  I felt as much like I was being scrutinized as he/she must have felt as I observed and photographed this awe-inspiring creature.  

This individual was “only” about average size (23 to 42 kg).  They can weigh more than 73 kg!  I promise many more details on this species in future blog items.

Image 2: Oct 29, 2011 Giant Pacific Octopus. Photo: Jackie Hildering.

There was so much other beauty under the dock but, for this blog posting, I will leave it at sharing the wonder of this Octo-brr octopus. 

 Bring on Novem-brrr to Fe-brrr-ary! The cold-water diving is so worth it! 

To see these (and additional) images from this octopus photo-shoot at full size, click here.

I would greatly appreciate it if you would let me know, via blog comments, which image (#1 to 6) you believe is the best. This will determine which image ends up in next year’s WILD Northern Vancouver Island Calendar.


To see video of a Giant Pacific Octopus subtly changing colour and texture, please see this previous blog item. 

Image 3: Oct 29, 2011 Giant Pacific Octopus. Photo: Jackie Hildering.

Image 4: Oct 29, 2011 Giant Pacific Octopus. Photo: Jackie Hildering.

Image 5: Oct 29, 2011 Giant Pacific Octopus. Photo: Jackie Hildering.

Image 6: Oct. 29 Giant Pacific Octopus. Photo: Hildering

Holy Mola!

Update February 2nd, 2021
This blog was written in 2011 reporting this to be a Mola mola.
I can now share that this is NOT a Mola mola. It is a Mola tecta! It is now known that there are two species of Mola in the NE Pacific Ocean. See the CBC news article announcing this here: Meet the Hoodwinker, the Ocean Sunfish we Misidentified for Years.

Mola tecta is the Hoodwinker Sunfish. See diagram at the end of this blog for the discerning characteristics.

As a result of writing this blog in 2011 (with the great photos taken by friends), I was contacted in 2020 by the researcher who could discern this species, Marianne Nyegaard who works in New Zealand. Now, in my role with the Marine Education and Research Society, we are helping get more sightings of Mola off the coast of BC to get a better sense of relative abundance. To relay sightings, please see this link.

Something very unexpected landed near the Port Hardy seaplane base on October 20th, 2011 – a dead Mola tecta. This species of ocean sunfish looks like a cartoon character rather than a relatively fast-moving, deep-diving fish whose design has been perfected by millions of years of evolution.

Chad Chrighton, the pilot who found the Mola tecta near the seaplane base. Photo credit: Mike D’Amour (North Island Gazette).

This fish species is aptly named since Mola means “millstone” in Latin and indeed this fish looks like a huge, flat, gray circle and has rough skin.  It appears to have no body, only a giant, round, flat head with a small beak-like mouth. It is propelled by two pointy fins (dorsal and anal) and is steered by a wide, rounded, rudder-like tail. 

Photo credit: Erika Grebeldinger.

Mola species were believed to be passive drifters who travelled only at the surface, wherever the current took them. However, satellite tracking studies have revealed that they dive deeper than 600 m and travel an average of 10 to 20 km per day, the same distance traveled by open-ocean shark species. 

 

Matthew Drake measuring the Mola tecta To give you get a sense of size, Matthew is 2m tall (6.5′). Photo credit: Erika Grebeldinger.

They are certainly a rarity on the inside of Vancouver Island however and I greatly appreciate that Matthew Drake let me know about this find and that he undertook a necropsy of the giant together with Louisa Clarke and Natasha Dickinson. 

This Mola tecta measured 2.00 m wide, from beak to tail fin, and 2.06 m long, from the tip of one pointy fin to the other. It may have weighed more than 200 kg. Remarkably, this is small for its kind. Mola tecta hold the record for being the largest bony fish on earth with an average mass of 1 tonne. The largest Mola mola (cousin to Mola tecta) ever recorded was 2,235 kg and 3.10 m by 4.26 m (it was struck by a boat near Australia in the early 1900s). Note that the whale shark can be more than 9 times bigger than this but, it is not a bony fish. 

Mouthparts. Photo credit: Mandy Ludlow.

Matt and the team concluded that the Port Hardy Mola tecta was female which meant that she could have up to 300 million eggs in her one ovary. This is another record for the species: having more eggs than any other animal with a backbone.  Another astounding fact is that the larvae could grow to be 60 million times their weight at hatching.

The investigation also revealed partially digested jellyfish in her gut, which is the typical prey of Molas / Sunfish. Their diet also includes small fish, eelgrass and crustaceans and they are able to spit out and pull in water and food with their unique mouthparts. As with all species that feed on jellies, a conservation concern is that they mistake plastic bags for their food. However, there was no evidence for this being the cause of death for this particular Mola tecta.  

Maybe parasites were a factor in her death? The team found lots of skin and intestinal parasites! Some of the round worms in the guts were even still alive. Parasites are common for Mola molas. In fact, it is now believed that the behaviour of “sunning” at the surface (hence, ocean “sunfish”) might be so that birds can feed on the skin parasites and that jumping more than 3 m out of the water might help dislodge some parasites too. Mola tectas are also found associated with drifting kelp patches, where small fish can clean away the pests.  

HOLY MOLA you never know what you are going to find in our amazing marine backyard. 

All the information collected was reported to oceansunfish.org and the mouth parts are on display in Telegraph Cove’s Whale Interpretive Centre. 

 

Beware!  Fabulous Mola tecta parasite pictures below! 

Advance only if you are NOT about to eat lunch and/or if you a biology-type like me who can view these kinds of photos in rapturous fascination anytime!

Photo by Erika Grebeldinger.

Sources: 

Links regarding other Mola species:

 

 

Her intestines were an astounding mass of worms. Likely the species include the parasitic flatworm, Nematobibothrioides histoidii which is thread-like but can grow to be over 12 m (40′). No one apparently knows just how long they can become, in part because dissections/necropsies on Mola mola are rare events. Photo credit: Natasha Dickinson. 

Parasites near the eye. Photo credit: Mandy Ludlow.

More great ectoparasites. Photo credit: Matthew Drake. 

Her single ovary. Can have 300 million eggs. Photo credit: Natasha Dickinson.