[Thales]

Originally posted by Gonodactylus
Wunderpus IME and talking to dive guides is active for only a few minutes about 2 crep periods after sunset and before dawn. Some people have told me that they will also come out a bit longer during the full moon, but I have no personal experience diving during bright full moon nights. My experience with mimics is too limited to say anything meaningful about activity. There do seem to be more diurnal sightings than with wunderpus.

Thanks Roy. Have there been any observations of the burrows over entire nights? I have found mine to be active before dawn and after dark, but for more than a few minutes. During the day, he is either holed up behind the HOB overflow or in a burrow.

Captive breeding> Given that only one small-egged species of octopus has been reared from the egg, that is a pretty ambitious goal. I certainly think we should try if a captive lays eggs, but the prognosis is very poor. If you could get them to feed, that would be a great advance in our knowledge. Right now we don't have a clue as to how long they are in the plankton or what size they settle out. If they could be reared and recruitment occurs, they could probably be raised to adulthood.

Given the access to cultured live foods that I have, I think I have a chance. The problem, of course, is getting ahold of the eggs.

We do not now, nor will we ever have detailed information on how rare these animals are. However, there are a few lines of evidence that provide cause for alarm and that would argue that we take action now. We know that muck habitats, by their very nature, are vulnerable to degradation. The processes that accumulate muck also concentrate pollution. Also, muck diving, starting with Lembeh, is becoming increasingly popular with many for dive guides looking for zebras to show to their customers. They dive at the "right time and in the right place" to see octopus, but usually can find only a handful and can go for months without any sightings at all.

Since muck habitats are so fragile, how worried are you about promoting dive tourism to those habitats? A million people swimming through Lembeh in a year would be... interesting.
Also, do we know if collection has reduced the numbers in Lembeh or if the animals have moved or if they are being killed by other factors?

I think that saying that we don't know how rare ignores that we know that there are not a lot of them. Certainly the collectors know that they are valuable and yet there are so few coming to market that when a few arrive at U.S wholesalers, it quickly becomes known.

I disagree about my statement ignoring that there are not a lot of them, and I think information gathered from Lembeh reflects only Lembeh. Given that these animals are distributed far, we really don't know how many of them there are or aren't.

Granted that we don't know anything about connectivity and dispersal in these species, but Indonesia (the current major source) is vast and protecting a species within its waters would certainly provide a large refuge.

If you could get Indo to restrict their collection, and then enforce that restriction, I think it would be great. Until then, I still am trying to figure out the best action for the animals languishing in LFS - females laying viable eggs in the LFS certainly don't do any of us any good.