Several LARGE octopus off of La Jolla, CA

Jabba954

GPO
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Jul 21, 2009
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104
Hey all - was diving for the first time off of La Jolla shores this past weekend (usually dive up north in Monterey/Carmel area), and along the canyon, at about 75', we encountered 3 very large octopus living within 5-10' of each other. The only one that we could coax out of its hole had a mantle of around 8-10" and arms of ~3'. Any idea of the species based on the description? Seems much too large for bimac.

Coloration was mottled brown, and no eye spot.
 
Oh, it was also fast/strong enough to unscrew the cover of my buddy's dive light when we first looked into the hole to see what was there.
 
I remembered that one of the bimacs (bimaculatus) gets a lot larger then the one we commonly keep so I looked it up in Cephalopods A Wold Guide (Mark Norman) and it does say that they can have mantles up to 20 cm (~8") and arms up to 80 cm (~31.5").
 
Sure looks like him - and digging up google images of the bimaculatus turns up a ton of pics from La Jolla Shores.
 

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