How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures

by Sabrina Imbler

Octopuses brood all over the sea. In shallow-water dens, giant Pacific octopuses lay tens of thousands of tiny eggs, strung from rock like dangling hyacinths. The purple octopus lays fewer, bigger eggs, each the size of a large blueberry. If you lay only 160 eggs, only 160 chances that your young will survive, you must watch over them as long as you can. You must pour as much of yourself into making them as strong as you possibly can. After she lays her eggs, the mother octopus bathes them in new waves of water, doused with oxygen and free of any silt or debris. Her eggs need to breathe, so these baths are unending, kept up until the moment the eggs hatch. The purple mother octopus in Monterey Bay chose to lay her eggs on a sheltered alcove on the canyon wall just a few feet above the seafloor. The scientists noted how the crown of a rocky shelf above her shielded her eggs from unwanted silt. The spot was perfect, it seemed, and she must have known it.