The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge. We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns.
We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.
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Summer 2020
Pacific Northwest
You and I are a terrestrial species, which means we are mostly oblivious to what’s going on in the oceans and the changes there. Global climate change is rapidly warming the ocean, and one consequence is a shifting of populations toward the poles, more rapidly even than terrestrial populations. Invertebrates like mollusks and crustaceans require oxygen-rich water and oxygen is less soluble in warmer water. It’s pretty well established that the cause of the biggest extinction event in history, the Permian-Triassic Extinction 252 million years ago that killed off 95% of all marine species, was due to a warming of the oceans, with its consequent deoxygenation. Research studies are measuring the effect of our current ocean warming on biological populations, mostly looking at commercially valuable marine populations like squid and crabs, and on the fish and mammals higher up the food chain.
Octopus are relatives of squid. Our biggest local octopus is the Great Pacific Octopus (known to scuba divers as GPO), a creature I was privileged to meet when I used to dive locally. I haven’t seen any studies about their movements specifically, but it’s not unlikely that they will show a similar northward pattern. A Southern Hemisphere octopus population has already been documented shifting poleward. It seems inevitable that our Pacific Northwest marine ecosystems will be significantly different below the surface even within our lifetime, and who knows what that will mean for our octopuses.
GPOs are stunning fascinating intelligent beings and no one who crosses paths with one is the same afterward. Any encounters are strictly on their terms, and it feels like a blessing to be greeted in a friendly way. I’ve met cranky ones too.
I keep an octo stuffie in my living room (along with hermit crab crocheted for me by a student in the marine biology class I used to run). Since I can’t visit with GPOs in real life anymore it’s a happy reminder of those amazing and beautiful cephalopod persons.
So it was very cool to cross paths with an octopus up the road from our house (Mr O actually took these pics, and he’s been keeping an eye on it during his daily constitutional up that way). It was constructed by the artist folks whose mailbox it protects. Very realistic, including the eyes and suckers, markings a mix of species.
Coloration too. Octopuses like all cephalopods are masters of color change, and their mood can be interpreted, however clumsily by us. The consensus tentatively suggests anger or aggression when they turn a dark red, and either fear or relaxation when they turn white, depending on the situation. My encounter with the young GPO pictured above, the only one I have photos of, taken by a fellow diver back in ~ 2000, suggests a mixed mood, which is the impression I felt at the time: it was exploring me, somewhat roused from its resting spot by the weirdness of an alien bumbling through its neighborhood, but not really upset. When they don’t like you, they just leave.
I don’t know any divers who have looked into the eyes of an octopus and not sensed the personhood of it. They are thinking, evaluating, deciding.
And those eyes are superior sensory tools compared to ours. They don’t have a blind spot. In the diagram to the right, you can see how the optical nerve fibers of humans are in front of our retina, blocking some light, and creating a central blind spot where the nerve bundle exits the eye en route to the brain. In cephalopods, the nerve fibers are on the exterior of the retina, seamlessly conveying visual information to the brain without the clumsy arrangement of vertebrate eyes.
I can’t help but think of the human blind spot as a figurative — even a defining feature — of our species, as well as a physiological defect. I can only hope that humans won’t devastate the marine world so completely that octopuses have a hard time surviving our ruination. How sad it would be if our grandchildren only have artwork to know them by.
Partly cloudy in the PacificNorthwest this morning, patches of blue sky. Temp 50°.
What’s up in nature in your area today?
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