Octopus Research Vlog

Taollan

Vampyroteuthis
Registered
Joined
Aug 17, 2005
Messages
304
Location
Walla Walla University
Hey All!
I have been around here on TONMO for the last decade, since I was an undergraduate in college and just starting to be interested in cephalopods. Now, I am a new professor and PI in my own lab. This summer I am going to be maintaining a video blog of my octopus research at Rosario Beach Marine Lab. My goal is to give the public a glimpse into how scientific research happens, and I am hoping that my research on the Ruby Octopus can hold people's attention. At this moment I have the first episode posted and hope to have get up 3 per week. So please, if this sounds like it interests you, check out my YouTube channel, Octopodium: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChNmWruL2ZGxG-GtBIoDHcg
If you really like what you see, please subscribe.
Thanks!
 
Saw your post on FB (messaged you there) and gave the first run a thumbs up on YouTube (as well as subscribing). Looking forward to watching the summer research program!

I had to laugh at your preamble as that is almost exactly what I mentioned to Neal when telling him what I was watching. :biggrin2:
 
@tonmo Could there really be any other song as the title track?

@DWhatley Thanks for your support! I struggled with that preamble a bit. I am still not quite good with the whole videoing myself thing and I am not scripting anything, so it took me like three or four tries before I got something I liked for that. It was a bit awkward to start it all off walking around graduation like that, but at least most people were holding cameras. I was the only one with it pointed at myself...
 
Loved the graduation scene and it was the perfect introduction but the preamble I was referring to was the TONMO comment about showing up here as an undergrad :biggrin2:

One tiny documentation suggestion that I have thought about when videoing octopus interaction but should be easier with this kind of exposure. You might try, in some way, to include a clear understanding of elapsed time (in this case there is little feel for how long you had to drive and for some reason, it made me want to know :biggrin2:) between events. With the octos, I worry that new keepers will expect an animal to immediately respond where the actual time was many hours of patient sitting and failed attempts that are boring to watch but somehow need to be added to the understanding. Peter Ward does a great job of this in his, In Search of Nautilus (one of the few books I have read twice and may read yet again). Not an easy thing to do in writing and even more of a challenge with a video blog.
 
Thanks for the tips, Denise! I will keep those in mind!
Also, just a heads up for everyone, two more episodes have been posted to date with another scheduled to go up tomorrow morning. It is looking like it may be a daily vlog...
 
OH NO!! Not at all. The only octopuses that have died in captivity are ones that were brought in senescent. It actually turns out that we bring in a lot of senescent octopuses this time of year (~10-15% of all we collect). We try to release them as soon as we collect them, but sometime we don't realize until they are back at the lab. Those we try to get back into the ocean as soon as possible, but sometimes that is a few days if we don't have a dive scheduled immediately. I think the stress of collection and transport makes those octopuses expire a bit more quickly than they would otherwise, so a few of those senescent ones we have collected have died in captivity. Those are what have died so far.
The GPO has been doing great and is voraciously eating crabs. We brought back a bunch of graceful crabs from a night dive the past two nights and she has been munching several of those down every night.
 

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