I found this medium-sized octopus on a night dive. It was perched on a piece of coral and I wasn't able to immediately recognize what I was looking at. After a moment in the spotlight, the octopus dropped down to the reef and began to move around. After a few minutes, it seemed to adjust to us and go back to hunting. Yay octos!
More bucket list creatures from Dumaguete! Flamboyant cuttlefish walk around the sea floor looking for small fish and crustaceans. When they find one, they slowly extend their two specialized feeding arms and snap out in the blink of an eye to grab their prey. A fellow diver and I spent 20 minutes with a single cuttlefish watching it walk and feed repeatedly. Video coming soon!
I've mostly stopped taking videos while diving in favor of still images, but I couldn't resist taking some video of these charismatic blue ring octopus. A still image just can't capture the hypnotic pulsing of those blue rings or the way they move around the ocean floor.
Blue Ring Octopus are famous for their venomous bite and their vibrant color. Despite their large personalities, they are small in stature. The fourth image below shows the octopus next to a regular-sized marble. It was a delight to watch this species flash its colors, walk around the sea floor, and even interact with a nearby fish.