Hey everyone,

The footage of the octopod in the video gallery on the SERPENT website here (http://www.serpentproject.com/norgal.php) was taken by industrial ROV pilots in the Norwegian Sea. The footage is from just under 1700m water depth - it looks a little like a Stauroteuthis syrtensis but I thought I'd see if any of you had any ideas!

Thanks in anticipation of enlightenment!

lis

I can offer nothing other than to say that is great footage! Thanks for posting! It does seem to resemble Stauroteuthis syrtensis (looked it up)...

Standing by with you for any enlightenment...

It seems that the cirrate octopod footage was actually from the mid-Atlantic Ridge. A lot of the other cool SERPENT footage was from the North Sea.

It seems that the cirrate octopod footage was actually from the mid-Atlantic Ridge

It was definitely from the Norwegian Sea from around a drilling rig at the Edvarda drill site - one of my colleagues was there when it was taken....

We do have some footage of an unidentified squid in the North Sea, but the quality of the video is really poor so it's very hard to tell what it is!

That's really interesting, thanks very much for showing us the video.

Very tentatively, I wonder if this is actually Cirroteuthis (http://tolweb.org/Cirroteuthis_muelleri/20094)? The only reason I thought that may be the case is that the arms of Stauroteuthis seem to project further from the bell than the animal in your footage. Have a look at this image so you can see where I'm coming from: Stauroteuthis (http://tolweb.org/Stauroteuthidae). I'm probably wrong about this, so please don't pay too much attention to me!

I hope Steve has a look at this and provides his opinion.

This is amazing footage regardless of where in the the dark depths it was taken from. If this is from one of your colleagues in the Norwegian depths and I got it wrong then I apologise. I'm a giant sucker for any cirrate octopod footage from anywhere, and am glad this was posted! If there's any more, please share! I honestly thought this was stuff I'd already seen from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge involving a cirrate.Those guys may very well be the cutest creatures alive on Earth, so show me more!

This guy looks like Casper! Wonderful footage. He seemed to be deliberatly striking photogenic poses...knpws he's beautiful, no doubt!

Thanks for the feedback guys!

Phil - i think you might be right, it does look more like Cirroteuthis muelleri than Stauroteuthis. The location would fit too.

We actually have some amazing footage of a Stauroteuthis that was collected using an ROV and submitted as an entry into an image competition we ran recently - go to Category 5 here (http://www.serpentproject.com/imagecompentries.php) and check out the winning footage, it's absolutely awesome!

Incredible video! I just happened to be listening to some odd ambient music and it sync'd really well to footage.

Quite beautiful. Thank you.