2010 - the first octopus - "Saith" - pictures starting from June 8
Received from the Monterey Abalone Company!
It was missing one arm. Saith means "seven" in scottish / gaelic, according to one of the FIR course students
We thought it was a male, because one arm is specialized for delivering sperm packets, and perhaps it got lost in an amorous encounter
But a week or two after "he" arrived, "he" laid eggs! This was terrible thing, because we knew the little octopi would hatch and die after a few days. There are many cephalopods whose diet has not been figured out. And we knew that the mother would die soon after, as all octopus mothers do. It was quite fun to watch the embryos develop, hatch and swim around, but it all ended sadly as expected.
We ordered a second octopus, "Tiny" August 25.
Several nice movies of Tiny catching crabs
We took him back to Connecticut, but he escaped from the tank and dried up on the floor!
2011 - "Mr Big". June 2
Perhaps was already old, he died within a couple of months.
The MBL vet clamped down on us and we had to keep Mr Big at the marine facility.
This
wasn't nearly as fun as having an octopus in the lab, so we stopped trying to get octopi for several years.
Another octopus - summer 2018.
The situation changed because MBL hired an expert from Monterey Aquarium to start culturing
cephalopods! So the MRC is now growing all sorts of exotic squid, and also Octopus bimaculatus
Also a new MBL vet who lets people keep octopus etc in the lab!
The Cephalopod facility gave one to the Physiology course, where it was named "Paul"
After the course was over, we inherited him, and renamed him "Paulpito"
-- because octopus in spanish is pulpo, so pulpito would mean little octopus.
Eating
we gave Paulpito back to the cephalopod facility at the end of summer