Quite beautiful to see, for those who hadn't yet: photographs taken for the first time in the Mediterranean of (a living) Tremoctopus gracilis (female).

http://uwpresse.com/SERVER/reportages/MARINE_LIFE/TREMOCTOPUS/index.html

What beautiful creatures they are.

Beautiful animal, very gracful...and it looks like a dress tossed under water......8-)

Wow! Incredible! Does anyone know what all that webbing is for, and if thats the right word for it?

Cheers!

Beautiful, just beautiful.

Could be for display purposes only, to capture prey or to improve specialized locomotion/gliding... Given the 1:40000 weight ratio between the genders, it might have a specific function during mating, even. Any suggestions from the octopusologists:grin:?

Fantastic images, great find ob. :grin:

Thanks, please notice the eggs (http://uwpresse.com/SERVER/reportages/MARINE_LIFE/TREMOCTOPUS/ppages/ppage20.html) as carried/sheltered by this particular female.

I know water conditions make it hard to judge depth sometimes, but if that's any deeper than 30m I'll eat my wetsuit. So is the claim that it's found between 120m and 750m wrong, or was this photo shoot some sort of anomaly?

She's a beauty, though, for sure...

Given the fact that both occasions (that I know of, anyway...) where this species was photographed at the surface involved females laden with eggs, it might be that the release of a new generation takes place higher up the watercolumn for reasons of avoiding predation or food abundance?

Food abundance makes sense, though I though usually cephs just released the eggs in one fasion or another and let the little ones find their way to the surface. And the colours!! That really made me question whether they were deep dwellers as they look it in other regards, but the colours are just fabulous! I know colour is not a definitive characteristic of shallower species, but wow! just Wow! Check out tolweb.org: http://tolweb.org/tree?group=Tremoctopus&contgroup=Argonautoida
for somemore really cool pictures including a series from Florida taken at about 15 m depth. Not as colourful, but still amazing. Plus that one has these two filaments coming off its web which are actually extensions of arms I. They're description says this about their vertical distribution:
"...occupy surface waters of tropical and subtropical oceans..."
Cool!

Cheers!

Nice avatar, main board :wink:

:cheers: Great stuff linking the Tree of Life page. It taught me something significant: that juvenile Tremoctopus have tool using skills! This type of behaviour is also known from (hermit) crabs, that will haul around a sea anemone for protection, but the wielding of Portuguese man o' war tentacles, something else again. How does it get them? Fascinating stuff....

As a huge lover of the more obscure, deep-water Cthulhoid cephs like the cirrate octopuses, vampyromorphs, and others with ridiculous webbing, I'm so happy to see these amazing photos. I had no idea anything that exotic got that close to the surface. Thank you so much for posting these! What a beautiful, beautiful creature. I'd love to swim with one. Looks bigger than I would have expected, too! Nice.
:smile:

Truely amazing photos

Could someone perhaps tell me what purpose the "holes in the head (http://www.tonmo.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-103)" in Tremoctopus serve? :confused:

Thanks a mil'

Olaf

But since science keeps revising itself, I wonder about the filaments and Vampy....:hmm: ..but the again, I am no expert and is posting this in the interest of tell you guys what's happening is my tiny brain.

Hello ob,

:shock:

Those are remarkable photographs of a stunning animal. The shots demonstrating Tremoctopus's countershading abilities (at the surface) are very interesting. What a thrill it must have been to swim with it.

Great find.

Cheers,
Clem

Yeah, the pictures are so fabulous that I figured they'd make a good avatar! The tool using is really neat, read about that somewhere else to but never saw a picture of it. According to a few sources (Nesis and tolweb) during an attach on a Tremoctopus when a piece of the arm is removed a great section of the webbing tears off along certain lines. The pieces of webbing includes some of the ocellar spots and is thought to act as a screen and confuse the predator while the octo escapes. Pretty cool, eh? I have no ideas as far as the "holes" go. I would absolutely LOVE to go snorkelling with these amazing creatures. Definitely a treat!

Cheers!

I'm still waiting on a pet vampiroteuthis :grin:

Has anyone captured any gelatinous octos before and kept them successfully?

:vampyro: in a chilled aquarium tank... ah, bliss. This little guy seems like it might do better in captivity, but you never know...

I bet if we all pooled some money we could force a sponser a marine bio lab to try and keep a jelly-octo (too sleepy to check real wording) or a Vampy in captivity, make a octoCAM would be nice.....*keeps on dreaming*


Sorry, I like daydreaming...:oops:

Well I'm keen
- just for a bit of entertainment we should come up with the "Official Tonmo reccomended tank specifications for keeping Vampyroteuthis infernalis."


http://web.fu-berlin.de/fun/2002/02-02/img/bilder2/zweite_seite_komplett.jpg


Tank Size: While vampy's dont get very large in comparison to some octopuses(O vulgaris, P condiformis), a "more the merrier approach" is the general rule of thumb with this species.

Oxygenation: 5%- 0.25 ml O2/l

Lighting : Total darkness, preferably in a specially designed dark room, uv lights could possibly be used as a light source.

Optimal Temp:

Skimmer: A good quality skimmer is a must, not only for inking events but also for maintence of tank parameters.

Tank Parameters:

Aquascaping: Very little to none, your vampy will require lots of room in order to feel most comfortable and move freely.

Aquiring your v. Infernalis. This species does not often appear in the pet trade, and if you see one you are highly advised to take it - this opportunity might not arise again for quite some time. :smile:


Feeding your v. Infernalis.



Ect. Add anything you can, I am genuinely interested in what would be needed, perhaps in the future when I'm older and have money I could look into it. But for now my curiosity is getting the better of me.
If you wanted to catch one what would you do? What does it eat? What size tank? What temp? I think they are at about 700m,?

Come-on you research types, if you had to bang up a vampy tank for a project what would it be?

Regarding catching, I believe there's at least one submersible that is capable of such a task. Can't remember which one, but I kind of think it was in relation to the whole "eye-in-the-sea" project. Basically it used the same sort of tactics as others, get close to the slow creature and scoop it up in a great big jar. The big difference, however, was that the jar used was sealed from light and insulated so that the water inside remained the same temperature. I can't remember if they caught any cephs, but I'm pretty sure they were successful with bringing up crabs and shrimp (maybe even fish) to the surface and observing them in aquaria for a short period of time.
With Steve's work in growing on deep sea paralarva, this idea might not be as far fetched as possible, minus the whole lack of funding for such an operation and the doubts regarding what this would contribute scientifically (well actually less scientifically, as this would be a really cool project, and more economically, and how you could justify getting funding for such a project). I would definitely sign up for it anyways, though!

Cheers!