Tentacles - Monterey Bay Aquarium (MBARI) Exhibit

Superhero squid, plus giant octopi, stumpy cuttlefish and the wunderpus, all at the Aquarium’s new Tentacles
Monterey County Weekly April 10 2014 Mark Anderson

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(c) Monterey Bay Aquarium/Randy

The Pacific octopus is the largest octopus, growing to about 16 feet and weighing up to 110 pounds. More than 2,000 suction cups covers its arms.


Posted: Thursday, April 10, 2014 12:00 am

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The first living thing visitors look at in Monterey Bay Aquarium’s new special exhibit looks right back.

Bigfin reef squid wait behind a 12-foot-long piece of glass near the start of the spellbinding Tentacles space that housed Jellies: Living Art and Secret Lives of Seahorses.

One of four fully grown, football-sized cephalopods hovers up to the glass to see what’s on the other side. It peers deeply, unblinking. Its glistening, ancient eye enjoys a grip stronger than its tentacles.

The gaze works like a goosebump conductor. It triggers a surprised laugh. It inspires motivation to bring a lawn chair.

Then the reef squid gildes away with a graceful flutter of its lateral skirts, joining its Indo-Pacific siblings in a perfect Rockettes lineup, like they had the routine pre-choreographed.

Something has happened here. It’s unclear what, exactly, but cross-species understanding was involved. Talk about an interactive exhibit.

Cephalopods – including squid, cuttlefish and octopi – live at every latitude (equator to poles) and depth (tide pools to kilometers beneath the sea). They can be as tiny as a fingernail (northern pygmy squid) and as big as a bus (giant squid), and their unique brains are a major chunk of their body mass. They solve puzzles and battle sharks, fit through openings roughly the size of a pinhole and occasionally attack (and eat) one other. They are often asked to pick the winner of major sporting events like the World Cup and Superbowl – and tend to do pretty well. Many use the art of camouflage as a cloak of invisibility. One shape shifts instantly; another hasn’t changed much in 500 million years. They use jet propulsion.

In short, they’re superheroes.

“I’m biased,” says aquarist Bret Grasse, who on the Weekly’s visit was dropping gnocchi-like stumpy cuttlefish into a display tank, “but I think they are the most unbelievable group of animals in the world.”

The entryway to Tentacles reinforces the hold they’ve had over humans, with museum-quality Minoan pottery, tiles from Pompeii and Victorian-era scientific and literary illustrations all dripping with tentacles. Also appearing: modern-day tattoo homages and a clip of Monsters from the Deep,in which a giant suction-cupped arm reaches up and pulls down a stretch of the Golden Gate Bridge.

“We’re not just creating this obsession in 2014,” Aquarium spokesman Ken Peterson says.

The hold tightens with what comes after the bigfin reef squid: the day octopus. The name comes naturally – it’s a diurnal eight-legger, as rare as a vampire with a tan, safely ambushing prey, eluding nemeses and patrolling corals from Hawaii to East Africa in broad daylight. It survives and thrives by transforming its skin into bumps, ridges and edges mimicking nearby rocks and reef.

In Tentacles, the day octo occupies a low, wide and cylindrical tank beautifully built for a hide-and-go-seek lesson in attentiveness. Here it is – wait, where’d it go? A trained eye can find him, once red and brown, now white and draped over a white coral, but also might not: The edge of the octopus is that subtle, its color changes that kaleidoscopic.

“These animals capture our imagination,” says Jaci Tomulonis, lead exhibit developer.

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After the day octopus comes another wonder, the wunderpus, with another authentic name: the little red and white striped Indo-Malayan native can change its patterns, body type and verymovements wondrously to mimic everything from poisonous lionfish to sea snakes.

Around the corner the flamboyant cuttlefish’s shape and color – like an alien satellite tagged with Castro District graffiti – is compelling, but the real head tweak is the way it uses thick tentacles like feet to walk over ocean bottoms.

Its prehistoric relative – the nautilus – merits as much pondering itself, all encased in its curling Fibonacci sequence shell with a propulsion system that’s mystifying to the uninformed onlooker.

When the live action isn’t arresting – the red, iconic giant Pacific octopus will hide out as much as they can – videos of cephalopods opening jars, flamboyant cuttlefish hunting and deep-sea octopi and squids hypnotize and educate.

Moving “kinetic” sculpture by Oakland’s Nemo Gould – built from found materials and welded into animated steel shapes depicting the threats cephalopods like the nautilus, octopus and cuttlefish face – deserve a long stare themselves. Guests can race squid via propulsion devices and simulate a nautilus’ vertical sleuthing around a reef for food.

The rarity of the endeavor emphasizes the special in special exhibit further. The Aquarium has invested in their husbandry since its inception, but wasn’t able to bring them to exhibit until 30 years later, and only then thanks to collaborations with international aquariums and big help from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

“This is definitely a first for any aquarium,” says Jennifer Dreyer, special exhibits coordinator for Aquarium’s animal care team.

Difficulty in keeping them alive comes from pressure, temperature and salinity sensitivities, and also because their natural life cycles are short, making time on exhibit often as quick as their color changes. As a result, staff will cultivate more backup species than they’ve ever kept for a single exhibit.

“These are all short-lived animals,” Dreyer says. “Many are species that have never been exhibited for very long or raised through their entire lifecycle.”

An egg lab offers a window into part of that process with an active display of the bubblers made into egg sacks from common plastic soda bottles; elsewhere a bank of tanks hides behind a retractable wall awaiting dumbo vampire squid, should Aquarium naturalists, using MBARI ROVs, come across some.

Near the end of the sequence, before the stumpy cuttlefish, comes another first. Captain’s chairs sit in front of tall Star Trek-style touch monitors and a master screen. A program invites visitors to video themselves changing facial expressions, which triggers varying octopus skin patterns overlaying each face – paralleling the changes octopi go through to creep on prey, hide from predators and seduce potential mates – then loads the clip for easy email.

It connects us to octopi, them to us, us to others, with conservation done viral along the way. Still, the most intense look at yourself – and the real communion between these sublime monsters and us – waits in big reflective eyes in the reef.

“TENTACLES: THE ASTOUNDING LIVES OF OCTOPUSES, SQUID AND CUTTLEFISHES” opens Saturday, April 12, at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Included with admission ($39.95/adult; $34.95/senior and student; $24.95/child (3 – 12). Free MST trolley service links the aquarium with downtown Monterey, Pacific Grove and waterfront destinations during peak summer season (Memorial Day to Labor Day).
 
Absurd Creature of the Week: Cross-Dressing Cuttlefish Puts on World’s Most Spectacular Light Show
MATT SIMON April 11 2014

Nice write up about cuttlefish, the Tentacles display and a collection of cuttlefish YouTube videos.

These are voracious, exceedingly clever predators of the highest order that aquariums have struggled for decades to raise in captivity, to no avail. Until now. Opening tomorrow is the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Tentacles exhibit in California, a showcase of the most remarkable cephalopods from around the world, including the charming cuttlefish.
 
Don't know if anyone's been yet (I went yesterday for the member preview) but it looks quite nice. Best of all, they've got two flapjack octopi on display! Amazing. Not mine, but here's some photos: nathantw
 
I probably won't be able to get there until the end of the month, but I am mega-excited. I got to see behind the scenes a bit when I was researching the article for KQED, and learned some fun stuff about exhibit design that I just posted on my blog as Tidbits of Tentacles.

This'll be my last Tentacles piece for a while, at least until I visit!
 
Tidbits of Tentacles
the Cephalopodiatrist @Danna Staaf April 12, 2014

@Danna, I'm taking some liberties here. If you only want the link posted, let me know but I would like to keep as much reading material in the thread as is acceptable :sagrin:

Tidbits of Tentacles

I fell in love for the first time at age ten when I met a giant Pacific octopus in the Monterey Bay Aquarium. For two hours I watched the slow dance of suckers across the glass, the deep billowing breaths, and most of all the sharp bright eyes that watched me back.



Giant Pacific octopus. (Randy Wilder/Monterey Bay Aquarium)
When we got home to LA, I promptly sold the expensive American Girl doll that I had saved up forever to buy and began looking in secondhand catalogs for a saltwater aquarium. My dad helped me set it up, our local fish store sold me inhabitants, and at school I became The Girl With The Pet Octopus.

Ten years later, my passion undimmed, I embarked on a cephalopod-themed Ph.D. at Hopkins Marine Station. Literally next door to the Aquarium.

So.

How excited am I that Aquarium's latest exhibit is all cephalopods? "Tentacles" opened today, featuring more GPOs, more cuttlefish, plus tropical octopuses and deep-sea octopuses and the most adorable little bobtail squid and dwarf cuttlefish. And how thrilled was I to be asked to write about it for KQED?

It was "almost supernatural fortune," to borrow the words of artist Nemo Gould. He was "approached and asked to do a strange and specific thing that I already wanted to do"--namely, create cephalopod sculptures to complement the exhibit's live displays. You can read more about them in my KQED article, or just visit them in situ.

While researching the story I gathered pages and pages of gripping material; I was totally sucked in. (Sorry!) Some of it went to KQED and some to Squid A Day. But I couldn't fit in either of those posts all the fun stuff I learned about exhibit design. Live animals are the stars, but as it turns out they have quite the supporting cast.

Arcade Games Physical Interactive Displays

When I walked into the Aquarium's workshop, the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams" was rocking out over the radio. Maybe half a dozen enormous poster printers were patiently churning out interpretative signs and wallpaper at a much, much slower beat.

Most fabrication of physical materials is done in-house, which means the Aquarium employs quite a few artists and engineers. In addition to designing and printing flat stuff, they build touchable displays--handles and buttons and knobs to grab and turn and push.

For "Tentacles" they put together a demo of jet propulsion. Visitors can pump a 3D-printed squid body through a tank, its jets visualized by bubbles shooting from its siphon. This strikes me as an especially useful display, given that the really active swimmers among squid are disqualified from live display by that very feature.


Video Games Digital Interactive Displays



After visiting the shop, I was taken to see the programmers, busily building with keystrokes rather than lathes. My host turned on a row of monitors to play looped footage of a school of bigfin reef squid while we talked.

Near the end of the conversation, he pointed out something that had completely escaped my notice: the "school" comprised copies of a single individual, edited and staggered in time so any given screenshot would show each copy in a different pose. This wasn't the original plan, but the aquarists, understandably nervous about stressing their display animals, kept the shooting time to a minimum and they only ended up with good footage of one animal. They made it work.

Copying and splicing squid together, though, is less of a challenge than teaching computers to recognize faces. How do you deal with glasses? Mustaches? The coders had to pull it off, though, in order to create a "facial recognition chromatophore display." When you gaze into this screen, it shows your face covered in chromatophores, the skin cells cephalopods use to change colors. And the chromatophores match your facial expression. For example, "look threatened, get blue rings on your face." How do you look threatened, I asked. My host demonstrated by baring his teeth.


Music

I've never gone to the Aquarium to listen to the music. I don't think I could remember a single tune I've heard there. But every gallery has its own score, whether or not you notice it, subtly influencing your experience.

The music track for "Tentacles" was inspired by "Peter and the Wolf"; the exhibit designers wanted an instrument for each animal. Meetings were held, notes were taken, and then an Aquarium delegate traveled to LA and worked with a producer to write the score. Finally, they hired musicians to perform it.

The whole process took 4-5 months, I'm told, and in retrospect I wish I had asked a hundred more questions. Are the musicians hobbyists, students, professionals? Can people make a living doing this? Does the Aquarium ever play parts of the score for test audiences before going live? Which instrument was chosen for each animal, and why?




Humans

People comes to the Aquarium to see cephalopods and fish and jellies and otters. No one comes to see humans. Still, Aquarium staff can be an integral part of an exhibit, fielding questions and offering a more engaging presence than an interpretive sign. In "Tentacles," a real live person will do a presentation about cephalopod intelligence a couple of times a day.

Cephalopods, especially octopuses, are widely known as the brains of the invertebrate world. I've found that "Aren't they really smart?" comes a close second to "Aren't they really tasty?" in frequency of questions from the public about cephalopods. Apparently the exhibit team talked about this a lot, and decided to avoid using the word "intelligence" in favor of talking about "adaptation." I think this was because scientists don't really have a satisfactory definition of intelligence. Nevertheless, at least three cephalopod scientists feel comfortable enough with the word to have published Octopus: The Ocean's Intelligent Invertebrate.

Besides, why be so cautious with terminology while shrugging off other biological inaccuracies? Real squid jets do not contain bubbles. Chromatophore patterns do not translate to human expressions. But a real squid jet is invisible in the surrounding water, and there's little of interest in seeing a foreign language, that may not even be a true language, in which you don't recognize a single word. Concessions are made in the name of practicality and accessibility.

I thought at one point I might like to work in exhibit design, but it seems rather daunting now that I know a bit more. I feel lucky that I get to simply write about all the hard work that goes into something like "Tentacles." I wasn't able to attend the opening this weekend; I may not make it down until the end of the month.

When I do, you'll probably find me in the GPO Grotto, gazing at my first love.
 
I got to see the full exhibit on Friday. It's fantastic. Every display clearly demonstrated a lot of talent and care on the aquarists part in designing tanks that show off the best of each animal, and keep the animals healthy. My personal favorite was the display of Idiosepius- they were mating, displaying, and laying eggs in the exhibit!
 
This has been a bucket list item for me long before there was any success keeping them alive for more than an hour or so. I so hope there will be one there when I get to the exhibit.

Mystery of the deep! Yesterday we added a deep-sea vampire squid to our Tentacles special exhibition--the first time this species has ever been displayed. Check it out in this short video, and learn more on our blog: Monterey Bay Aquarium
 

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