Octopus vs. Shark?!

It's indeed a repost, but that's not a problem, is it? saves some of us the trouble of formulating the right search terms :wink:

PS: the largest octopus in the world (besides the Lusca :biggrin2:) is actually Haliphron atlanticus...
 
ob;94190 said:
PS: the largest octopus in the world (besides the Lusca :biggrin2:) is actually Haliphron atlanticus...

You've got your 1000 posts in, you can stop being defensive about gelatinous blobtopuses now... :wink:
 
ob;94190 said:
PS: the largest octopus in the world (besides the Lusca :biggrin2:) is actually Haliphron atlanticus...

Ok, I have to disagree with this about Haliphron atlanticus, and so you don't think I am just spouting off out of my ignorance (as many people do who make this claim about E. dofleini), let me explain my reasoning.

I figure there is two ways to approach this, Very conservatively, or somewhat Liberally. The Conservative way would be to only accept measurements of live or very recently living animals done by or under the supervision of a scientist, or a slightly more liberal way of accepting estimates of living weights from incomplete, and/or long dead specimens done by or under the supervision of a scientist, and to be fair, also include records from fisherman, only when properly weighed and recorded, AND photographed and from that photograph experts on that species in particular agree is a very believable weight.

Under the Conservative approach the record would be a 71kg E. dofleini held in the Undersea Gardens in Victoria, BC, and was weighed and vouched for by James Cosgrove, an expert on GPOs. Under the Liberal approach the record is also a GPO weighing 180kg caught by fisherman Andrew Castagnola, weighed by him, AND photographed and that photograph has been reviewed by GPO experts, who subsequently have cited this as the largest GPO. Even if the weight was slightly off, this octopus was clearly much larger than the Haliphron from New Zealand.

The only way to accept Haliphron atlanticus as the largest is to conveniently be liberal enough to accept a the estimate of a 61kg carcass being 75kg is life, but conservative enough to no accept other very reliable reports of larger GPOs caught by fisherman, despite abundant evidence that the weight is reasonably accurate.

So as I see it, the GPO is still the largest octo in the world.
 
Sound reasoning! I do have this softspot for benthic gelatinous blobs, that's all :wink:

Are the pictures of Andrew Castagnola available at all? Will google...
 
I do have a scanned copy of it, and will post it, but I am trying to make sure that its liscencing allows me. The only thing that has me a little jittery is that they are currently using the image on postcards. After I get all of that figured out, I will post it up here.
 

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