Checking in from the GG, OC, CA!

[Sharkdude]

Greetings from the wilds of Garden Grove, Orange County, California.
Found the site in the Ceph Forum on ReefCentral.com
I'm a reef aquarist, and early on in my days, I kept an octo for about 7 months before he perished.
I've also encountered some wild octos while on dives in Monterey, CA and Oahu, HI several years ago.

Just got a new Octopus tattoo and thought I'd share. (work in progress)

later fellow ceph-heads! ( Iguess that is redundent!?)

Chris
aka Sharkdude/Reef Joker

 

[monty]

to TONMO! I was just down in OC over the weekend... I've seen octos in twilight dives in Laguna Beach, but haven't had your luck in Monterey or Hawaii...

 

[Jean]

from down under!

J

 

[cuttlegirl]

to our underwater world!

 

[DrBatty]

 

[Sharkdude]

Thanks for the welcome

I just remembered an old fishing story.
In mid 80's, when in High Scool and before I had a driver's license, me and a couple of buddies used to take the bus to Newport Beach and Balboa to fish off the pier. Once, we were fishing off a semi-private dock in the inlet area to Balboa Island. My friend had a way over sized rig and we teased him that it wasn't the season for whale fishing! Well, after a while, my friend was seemigly snagged on the bottom. He just kept pulling and pulling and refused to cut off the line. Then abruptly, it came loose and he started reeling in. He starts yelling, "I caught an octopus! I caught an octopus!" and I told him no way, he just was pulling up some big clump of seaweed. But when he got it up to the surface and eventually on the dock, we learned the true story. He did indeed catch an octopus, snagged by the hook in thick part of an arm, but the octopus had grabbed onto a large clump of seaweed. My friend's persistent tugging on the line had eventually pulled the mass of seaweed free from the holdfast via the grasping arms of the octopus! We played with it for a while on the dock and then ended up selling it for $10 to a couple japanese guys who were very excited by our catch! The octopus was estimated at about 5 lbs and arms about 24 inches and head the size of a grapefruit.