Some would say there is no sweeter picture than that of a new mother holding her cooing baby. Today I’d like to share an even sweeter picture with you: a new mother cradling 30 to 40 of her babies, who are still eggs, in her hook and sucker overgrown arms. To make it even more beautiful, it’s a video, and not even vertical, facing forward!
The squid below was filmed in 2015 by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute while piloting a remote-controlled vehicle. Doctor Ricketts, which was named after a famously hot scientist who had 15 animal species and named a nightclub after him. Researchers launched an ROV in the Gulf of California to find out how many creatures live in deep ocean regions with extremely low oxygen levels. A little over 8,400 feet below the surface, a large red octopus floated, carrying several dozen eggs in its fleshy arms.
Most octopuses take a much more carefree approach to childcare, meaning they lay eggs and die immediately. That’s why it’s often difficult for scientists to track where these eggs go beyond the mouths of hungry predators. Some octopuses anchor their eggs on the sea floor. Some large squid lay translucent masses containing up to 90,000 eggs that float neutrally in open water. But deep-sea octopuses have their own strategy. Some lay their eggs and carry their eggs in large sheets resembling Hong Kong waffles as they drift in the dark.
During 37 years of research, MBARI scientists have observed several other species of deep-sea octopus burrowing their eggs. They observed several black-eyed squid Gonatus onyx holding a billowing balloon of small eggs that the octopus carries by means of hooks on its arm. And they filmed octopuses in the family Bathyteuthis clutching hundreds of tiny translucent eggs in a curtain-like sheet. These stressed-out octopuses cannot take in food during estrus, so they maintain themselves on energy reserves until their eggs hatch and they can die.
The newly filmed squid appears to be a new species in the family Gonatidae, or squid. They are named for the many hooks on their arms, which are actually modified suction cups, and the larger hooks on their two long tentacles. The researchers were surprised by how large the new squid’s eggs were—each nearly half an inch in diameter, twice the size of previous estrus observations. Gonatus squid and the largest recorded of all squids. And while others Gonatus octopuses would lay leaves of up to 3000 eggs, this mother only had 30 to 40.
Laying thousands of eggs can be a good bet for shallow-water squid living in unpredictable environments with variable amounts of food and predators. However, the researchers suggest that the strategy of investing more time and care into fewer eggs could pay off in the relatively stable environment of the deep sea. “Her sacrifice increases the chances that her offspring will survive. It’s just one of many remarkable adaptations that can help cephalopods survive in the deep sea,” Henk-Jan Hoving, a researcher who leads the deep-sea biology working group at GEOMAR. in Kiel, Germany, and conducted this research at MBARI, the deep-sea octopus said in a statement Graneledone boreopacifica she relies on this strategy to an extreme degree and keeps her eggs for more than four years.
However, larger eggs take longer to develop, and researchers predict that the eggs of this squid require at least 1.4 years to develop into squid. This timeline is notable not only for the effort it requires of the mother squid, but also for the fact that it exceeds the lifespan of most cephalopods living in shallow or coastal waters. The researchers suggest that octopuses can only perform such a vulnerable act of burrowing in these low-oxygen regions of the ocean, where predators may be more scarce. Either way, it’s a long time to drift in the depths while trying to avoid being eaten.
Since this mother octopus was filmed in 2015, her eggs would have long since hatched, leaving her to die and sink to the bottom of the Gulf of California. Somewhere in the bay, a deep basin called the Cerralvo Trough has become the squid’s unofficial burial ground, where squid carcasses and the remains of their eggs settle in the gloom to feed these even deeper creatures. In 2012, MBARI researchers observed the fall of dead octopuses and eggs that became a feast for rats, acorn worms, brittle stars, sea cucumbers, crustaceans and sea stars. All the mothers seem to have died at the same time, releasing their babies into the depths as they sink together until the rats tear off their tentacles for a snack. And it’s not a pretty picture!