Rare Giant Octopus Sighted on Lord Howe Island
By Terry Cummins
Lord Howe Island just a 2 hour flight from Sydney or Brisbane has been a preferred destination for divers since the 70s with its highly diverse marine and terrestrial environments. For those that have never visited the area, Lord Howe Island - first sighted in 1788 - is more a series of closely clustered small islands including the Admiralty Islands and Ball Pyramid. The main island is only 11 ks long and 2 ks wide rising out in the Tasman Sea 600 kilometres east of the Australian mainland.
This is a place that you must put on your bucket list. The island magnificent topography dominated by Mt Lidgbird (777 m) and Mt Gower (875 m) generated by volcanic activity 6 1/2 million years ago hosts a multitude of migrating and rare native bird life including the Woodhen that once faced extinction.
Below the surface vertebrate and invertebrate life is highly diverse with the northern and southern currents converging, so divers witness the profusion of both temperate and tropical marine life.  There has been over 500 species of fish identified locally with several species endemic to the region including the double header wrasse, Lord Howe Island coral fish, McCullochs anemone fish and the rarely sighted Ballina angelfish.
The Lord Howe Island Group was World Heritage listed in 1982 in recognition of its outstanding natural beauty and its exceptional biodiversity. Two thirds of the island is a Permanent Park Preserve and the surrounding waters were declared a Marine Park in 1998. The coral barrier reef, at 31° S, is the most southerly in the world.
Accommodation on the island ranges from comfortable self contained units to the world renowned 5 Star resort of Capella Lodge where not even the word: “luxury” can describe the lodgings, food and service. There are two PADI dive operators on Lord Howe located right on the shore of the main lagoon – Howea Divers and Pro Dive Lord Howe Island. Both facilities have excellent hire gear, dive vessels and will cater for any size dive party, large or small.
Back in the late 70s and early 80s I worked on Lord Howe with Pro Dive / Sea Life so this time, for old time’s sake, my wife Cathie and I were diving with Tasman (Tas) Douglass of Pro Dive.
On our second dive of the day in early April 2011 we were at a site much frequented by divers – Landslide just off Malabar. Here a vertical cliff face rises 200 meters out of the surrounding reef on the southern end of the main island. Landslide is an absolutely great dive consisting of three coral finger reefs running parallel to the coast at about 12 to 18 meters with abundant marine life, caverns and swim throughs.
There were three of us diving with Tas that day - PADI Divemaster Samantha Hardy, Cathie and myself. We had just finished a sweep through the swim throughs, taken a look at a beautiful Queen Angel and marvelled at the abundance and variety of morays when a family of brightly coloured nudibranchs clustered together on the edge of the second finger reef grabbed our attention.
The pure white sand that reached out to the third finger reef helped magnify the great visibility and looking up we noticed what seemed to be a blanket drifting just below the surface 16 meters above our heads. After our initial surprise the clear water quickly revealed that this blanket indeed had eyes, a body and was gracefully swimming down to greet us.
As it approached, appearing not at all to be shy, we were in awe of its size -approximating 3 meters (an accurate estimate as it was much longer than the out stretched divers now at its side). We all stared giving each other signals which generally translated underwater to: “what the hell is this”? Certainly in my 45 plus years of diving and many hours underwater on Lord Howe I had not seen anything like it before, ever!
Very close examination, and I must admit a gentle touch of the blanket, revealed that it was a cephalopod of some type – maybe a squid, but no, more likely an octopus with a 2 1/2 meter blanket billowing from its head.
We swam with this rare giant for about 10 to 15 minutes and during that entire time we felt that it was observing and enjoying our company us as much as we were enjoying it. Even when we got down to 50 bar of air and finally had to return to the boat, it turned with us as if to say; “farewell”. A truly magic moment !
During the mandatory safety stop, Tas and I quickly sketched diagrams of the animal on our slates so we could record details of shape, size, etc and to later determine what we had seen, having no working camera with us to record our exceptional sighting digitally.
On reaching the surface we were all smiles, extremely exuberant and immediately continued our: “what the hell was that” conversation even before climbing into the boat. We were greeted and helped on board by trainee Divemaster Chris Tafili-Reid who very excitedly related that “the thing” had circled the dive boat on the surface for at least 10 minutes whilst we were on other parts of our exciting dive.
Returning to shore our dive team concluded after several phone calls to the Australian mainland (thanks to Mandy Reid and Australian Museum for assistance with identification), talking to the Marine Park staff on LHI (thanks to Ian Kerr and Sallyann Gudge), flicking through the reference texts and of course an internet search, that what we had seen was indeed a Tremoctopus – a genus of pelagic cephalopods containing four species that occupy surface to mid-waters in subtropical and tropical oceans. Of course Lord Howe has exactly these conditions.
Descriptively they are commonly known as; “Blanket Octopus”, in reference to the long transparent webs that connect the dorsal and dorsolateral arms of the adult females. The other arms are much shorter and lack webbing and at first this was the reason we were confused as to what was before us as they were somewhat hidden under the blanket. That is, when we first sighted the animal the blanket was not fully extended and it looked more like a giant squid. We now know that full extension of the blanket only takes place when the octopus wants to look bigger and ward off predators. During our encounter the blanket was over a meter across when fully extended
“Wikipedia” also told us that the Blanket Octopus exhibit an extreme degree of sexual dimorphism (i.e. difference in form between individuals of different sex in the same species). That is, it was confirmed for us that females may grow to 3 metres in length whereas the tiny males are at most a few centimetres long. The males have a specially modified arm which stores sperm, known as a hectocotylus (i.e. an arm that is modified to effect the fertilization of the female's eggs). During mating, this arm detaches itself and crawls into the mantle of the female to fertilize her eggs. The male dies shortly after mating. The females carry over 100,000 tiny eggs that are attached to a sausage-shaped calcareous secretion held at the base of the dorsal arms and carried until hatching. In our female there were no clear signs of an egg case so that may have accounted for why she did not exhibit any aggression towards us.
One of the most amazing characteristics of all is that these animals have evolved an unusual defence mechanism. It appears that the Blanket Octopus is immune to the extremely poisonous Portuguese Man O' War, whose tentacles the male and immature females rip off and use for defensive purposes. Also, unlike many other octopuses, the Blanket Octopus does not use ink to intimidate potential predators. When threatened, the female fully unfurls her large net-like membranes that make up her blanket, greatly increasing her apparent size.
The Blanket Octopus is rarely seen and only then by a handful of divers across the world. It is listed on “Its Nature” as one of the 10 most bizarre animals in the world. To date our sighting was the first recorded on Lord Howe Island according to the local Marine Park staff.
On my return to the Australian mainland I had to contact my old friend and famous Underwater Naturalist Neville Coleman to tell him of our discovery. Neville told me; “It is not on the marine Fauna lists of Australia, so I expect that is a new record for Australia.... personally I think it’s a really once in a lifetime sighting..... you may well have the only image record of that species from the entire South Pacific as most other images and records can find, come from other oceans.

Unfortunately, as often happens with rare sightings, we were unable to photograph our encounter with this magnificent giant of the ocean. Those interested can Google Blanket Octopus and see some rare still and video footage of these marvellous creatures.

Will see the Lord Howe Island tourism association attend DEMA 2010.

The LHITA will this year attend DEMA for the first time. DEMA is the world’s largest dive gear and travel show and will be held in Las Vegas, USA.

Lauren is lucky enough to be representing the island at the show. When we purchased the dive shop 6 years ago we would never have dreamed that we would get the opportunity to promote the island at such a large mainstream event. A big opportunity for such a small remote destination. Exciting times ahead!

The 10/11 season has started and is so far off to a great start with a Ball’s Pyramid trip in the first week. Our Divemaster Kyla Geen completed her PADI Instructors course and is on board and ready to go. Kyla’s First Open Water course is booked for next week, we are looking forward to seeing Kyla pass on her knowledge and passion for the underwater world to her students.

Winter 2010 seen the official launch of Lord Howe Windsports, with sailors from all over the country coming over for a blast along the islands lagoon.

Lord Howe windsports is a JP & Neil Pryde windsurfing hire centre that will open in the winter months while Pro Dive is closed. Windsports is owned by Tim Northam and Tas and will be a great opportunity for Tas while the Dive Shop is closed. Some would say he has the life……. Diving in summer and Windsurfing in winter. www.lordhowewindsports.com

A late honeymoon to Fiji staying at wananavu resort, warm weather and friendly people we had a great time, with a days windsurfing and of course a couple of dives it was the perfect getaway.

The season of 2009/10 turned out to be another great season with fabulous conditions. The weather was consistently sunny and warm and the water vis was over 40 meters through the main part of the summer.

This year’s highlight was defiantly getting married. Holding the ceremony on the 22nd February in the middle of peak season (who’s idea was that?) we had a great day, a little sunshine for the ceremony and a touch of rain in the afternoon made for some great celebrations.
The wedding held at Little Island (a long bush walk in heels and a long dress, again… who’s idea was that?) Made for a spectacular backdrop and an amazing entrance walking down the isle.

Followed by a lively reception at Pandanus restaurant. A brilliant day!

Winter 2009 adventures seen us doing the usual Melbourne trip with family, a quick visit to Sydney for a couple of Lord Howe nights at the PRO DIVE Manly and city stores followed by the opportunity of a lifetime… Swimming with the Humpback whales in Tonga.

Our first few days were nothing but strong winds, rough sea’s (a little sickness too) with not a whale in sight.

On the last 3 days of our trip did our luck change! I jumped in as a whale was approaching and before I knew it, I was surrounded by 3 adult whales and a calf about 2 days old.

The feeling was just surreal. While the experience was brief it was well worth putting up with the previous days of bad weather and no whales.

While we thoughly enjoyed our holiday we were a little concerned to see a couple of the commercial whale watching boats harassing the whales and getting far too close. More education and tougher regulations are still needed in Tonga.
 

Following Tonga was a quick trip to Nelson Bay with Pam and Chris at PRO DIVE Nelson Bay. We intended to stay the night, the diving was great so we stayed the week!

While I must admit it was freezing, we did see some pretty amazing things. Loads of seahorse and cuttlefish, but I think the highlight was while admiring a  beautiful rose shell with its mantle out on display an Occy reached out one leg and picked it up. After realizing that we were watching, he just placed it back where it was like a naughty child who had just been caught stealing a cookie.

We were fortunate enough to meet up with Dave Harasti who took us on a few dives while he was undertaking his seahorse surveys. Dave was brilliant at spotting the nudibrachs and his seahorse conservation methods are a great program for the Nelson Bay Marine Park.