Rare Dumbo Octopus Spotted a Mile Beneath Ocean Surface

A rare and adorable octopus has been spotted during a livestream from a deep-sea expedition, delighting the researchers.

The creature, known as a dumbo octopus, was caught on camera during an EVNautilus livestream by the Ocean Exploration Trust, which shows the observations of the ROV Hercules (remotely operated underwater vehicle) as it explores the ocean floor.

This strange marine creature was seen floating above the ROV at a depth of 5,521 feet, or around a mile under the ocean surface. It happened near an unnamed seamount in Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM), a 580,000-square-mile area of marine protected area in the Central Pacific Ocean.

"Wow! I'm glad we got to see a live one," a crew member aboard the Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus can be heard saying as they watch the octopus float into frame. "Oh, the flappy, flappy ears."

The researchers were surprised at how pale the octopus was, before realizing that it may be due to the contrast of the bright light and the dark ocean behind.

"Given the completely blue background and the light reflecting on it, that's probably making it look a little whiter," a crew member said.

The Nautilus researchers determined that the animal was floating around 65 feet above the ocean floor and was likely a dumbo octopus.

"It looks like a Grimpoteuthis species," one researcher can be heard saying. "That is a wonderful view."

Dumbo octopuses are a genus of deep-sea umbrella octopuses, so-named for their flapping fins that resemble the large ears of the famous Disney elephant character. They are thought to be the deepest-living of all octopuses, being found between 3,300 feet and as deep as 13,100 feet below the surface. Spotting one of these creatures is a rare event due to their extremely below-the-surface habitat.

"This dumbo octopus is a type of demersal (sits on the bottom and swims generally close to it) cirrate octopod often spotted in the deep waters of the Central Pacific, which the Ocean Exploration Trust has been exploring for the past few years," the Ocean Exploration Trust said in a statement.

"Dumbo octopuses propel themselves through the water using those famous ear-shaped fins to find food, then gobble their prey up whole, feasting on a variety of deep-sea critters such as copepods, isopods, bristle worms, and amphipods."

Due to their rarity, these octopuses have an ingenious way of ensuring the survival of their species. On the off chance that they encounter another dumbo octopus, females carry eggs of various stages of development and are capable of storing sperm for a long time until the environmental conditions are right to fertilize their eggs. The females then lay their eggs on hard surfaces on the sea floor.

Contrary to popular perception, deep-sea animals such as dumbo octopuses don't need to structurally withstand high pressure in the same way that our deep-diving vehicles do.

"The pressure in the deep ocean doesn't crush the animals that live there because their bodies don't have gas-filled compartments like our lungs inside them," Jon Copley, a professor of ocean exploration and science communication at the University of Southampton in the U.K., told Newsweek. "If you drop an iron bar into the ocean, it doesn't implode when it reaches a particular depth because of pressure—it's made of solid matter, which is incompressible. Liquids are pretty incompressible, too.

"Try taking a syringe of water, jamming your thumb over the squirty end, and squeezing down the plunger; you won't be able to push that plunger in, unlike squeezing a syringe full of air," Copley said. "So an animal such as that dumbo octopus, whose body consists of solid tissues and liquid body fluids, is pretty incompressible and doesn't have to withstand a difference in pressure between the deep ocean surrounding it and a space filled with a compressible material such as air inside it."

Pressure is a challenge for deep-sea life when it comes to what happens to molecules inside their cells, however,

"High pressure in the deep sea traps water molecules on protein molecules as they form inside cells, preventing them from folding into the right shape to work as enzymes that control all living processes," Copley said. "Lots of deep-sea animals have evolved small 'chaperone' molecules that pull water off their proteins as they form, helping to keep them in shape to work as enzymes."

The Nautilus expedition will continue to dive into the deep and will hopefully find a number of other rare and wonderful creatures in the abyss.

"There are around two million species of animals living in the ocean, although only about ten percent of them have been described so far by biologists," Copley said. "We can estimate that 'known unknown' from looking at the rate at which we're finding new types of animals as we explore.

"As most of the ocean, by volume, is 'deep sea'—which we define as anywhere more than 200 meters deep—then it's a safe bet that at least half of all ocean species are likely to be deep-sea species. So there are probably at least a million species of animals living in the deep ocean."

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Update 09/26/23, 12:10 p.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Jon Copley.