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Giant Pacific octopus washes ashore
Largest species in the world is not uncommon off local shores Kimmy and Bobby check out their discovery on the beach Friday. Submitted Photo “It was enormous,” Starets-Foote said. “The tentacles were chewed off, but judging by the diameter of where they hit, the body they must have been 10 feet long.” It was the first such encounter for Starets-Foote and her children, Kimmy and Bobby. “We’re on the beach all the time,” Starets-Foote said. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. The kids were really excited. They wanted to see all of its parts so we flipped it over.” After examining its eyes, tentacles and beak, the children built a wood structure around the octopus to protect its corpse from birds. “As we left the seagulls descended, so I imagine it wasn’t around much longer,” Starets-Foote said. Humboldt State University invertebrate biologist Sean Craig was not surprised that a possibly 10-foot-long octopus would washed up here. “It’s not at all unusual,” Craig said, adding it was probably a giant Pacific octopus. “There are a large amount of the giant Pacific octopuses off our coast which regularly get to be 10 feet long.” The giant Pacific octopus is the largest in the world, despite having a short life cycle, Craig said. “Typically they live between 1.5 and 2 years,” Craig said. “But in that time they have enormous growth rates. In one year a giant Pacific octopus can grow from the size of a golf ball to 7 or 8 feet long. They are very abundant, and surprisingly are very intelligent animals.”
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