Baby Blue Ring?

Tamara

Blue Ring
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Joined
Apr 22, 2010
Messages
44
Hi everyone,
I was doing a muck dive the other day and my buddy and I came across this guy I suspect it's a young lesser blue ring octopus, but I'm not sure, I was hoping you could help.
Size: 1.5cm "ish"
The bottom: heavy sand with peices of coral rubble, 15m depth
His (her?) reaction to being photographed was to stay still not really changing colours and to crawl slowly away pressing his body close to the sand, after two or three photos changed to white and quickly jetted away approx 1m off the bottom.
 
When you say star around the eye do you mean the protruding fleshy bits that make a sort of star around the eye or is it more technical than that? I'm new to attempting to identify octopus. i have a lot to learn. What details should I be noting to try to figure it out (eye stars etc) Any ideas what sp. it may be?
 
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I am no help with ID but there is an interesting, likely diagnostic on this one. Notice the chromatophores on the siphon. I think the star that Muctopus refers to is more of a color pattern (that I don't see) and not protrusions if I am not mistaken. Maybe a very young cyanea?
 
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Thanks for your help, hopefully I can find it again. Most octopus that I've met tend to stay close to the same area but this one was pretty tiny and it was sheer luck that we even saw it. One of our group was taking a photo of a nudibranch so I was waiting just ahead of them when my buddy spotted it 1 meter to the left. It was an exploration dive with lots of interesting critters so hopefully we can hit that same sand patch again! The only octopus I've seen here so far have been blue ring (and that guy). I'm sure there are plenty others just sneakier or maybe I need to do more night dives to find them. Diving is a lot more fun when you know what your looking at so thanks for the help.
Any tips on what to look at in case we can't get a photo? eye stars, mantle vs arm length, general size?
Is there a thread on here dedicated to IDing, or a good book you could recommend? From the number of people trying to figure out what type of octos they bought it seems like it's pretty hard to get a positive IDs just by looking.
 
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Look for any book by Mark Norman. His most used one in this crowd is Cephalopods A World Guide (no longer in print but you might find the revised 2003 edition). I have seen an Australian version (sorry, I don't have the title) listed somewhere that I believe is dedicated to NZ and Australian species but I have never seen the physical book.
 
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Would a cyanea be found far from the reef?
The area I was diving from is about 50m-75m from the type of substrate I thought they preferred. The octo was in the open on the sand. Nearby -6 to 10meters- I had found an unattatched broken piece of whip coral with squat lobsters (almost as long as the octopus but with a parasite so slow, possible food?) and a tiny cowrie but other then that the biggest rock/coral rubble I saw was baby finger sized- would that be big enough to hide him or do they not like to hide as much when they are small?
We found it about 40 min before sunset.
Thanks for the recommended reading!
 
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I have not had the pleasure of meeting one of these guys yet so my guess was a stab in the dark based upon a comment by Mucktopus on another ID thread (mentioning that juvenile cyanea looked a lot like A.aculeatus). Chrissy and Roy often notice ID requests so hopefully one or both with have a look and a guess.

The Norman book is better than reading material for your needs. The referenced book is a large collection of Ceph photos with a paragraph or two describing them (squid and cuttles are also included). The written text is not enough for an ID but does give some good clues on what to look for.
 
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Looks like there are a couple of copies availible on amazon. The cover looks really firmilar, I'm going to have to dig through the older fish books in the second classroom, maybe there is a copy hidden here somewhere.
 
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It has become overly pricey in the last year or so. If you don't find it in your dusty collection, look for a used copy or an alternate seller. I was very lucky to find it marked used but new on Amazon a few years back for MUCH less (I am thinking $35 but it may have been a bit more) and last year we found two new copies (that TONMO members grabbed) at an off beat seller for a reasonable price. I wish I could find the Australian version title at it might be more helpful but I only saw a reference to it once and was never able to locate the book on-line.
 
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Darn, digging through the old collection didn't turn it up. Although I found a ton of other books with the same editor (Helmut) which have almost the same cover so maybe I just thought I had seen it. I tried to go back to the same site yesterday but I think I may have missed the site. Dropped in in totally the wrong area at 25+ meters with a really slity bottom. Managed to find a few nudis, tons of squat lobsters, and a couple of cowries but no cephs. Today I dove the reef nearby and found a small pair of cuttlefish they looked friendly with eachother.
 
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What am I

Hi I orignally posted this under diving and encounters but this might be a more appropraite place for my question.
Can you guys help ID this guy?
my first guess was blue ring, because that's what I've seen around here the most and when he jetted away he was white with a hint of blue.
found at 16m, sandy bottom. about the size of a fingernail. Stood his ground while the photographer used a stick to try to get him to move closer to the camera lens only fled (is that a word/) after a couple of photos
 
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Tamara,
To avoid two threads on the same subject, I am going to merge this with the one you posted on the ID forum. Be sure to add more cephs that you encounter while diving though :biggrin2: Either place is good (but when requesting an ID, the ID thread will most likely be noticed by our experts) but not both.
 
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