My own octopus teacher.
Swimming with a blue-ringed octopus opened my eyes to the wonders of cephalopods and helped me towards my future vegan self.
In 2020 the critically acclaimed film My Octopus Teacher was released on Netflix. The documentary captured the relationship formed between Craig Foster and a free-living common octopus whom he visited in the kelp forests off the coast of South Africa. Viewers were treated to insights into the life of this octopus, as she learned to trust Foster and began to interact with him, even playfully on occasion. Also documented was her struggle to survive as a predator and as a prey species in what could be a hostile world; we watched as she hunted and was hunted, as she survived and recovered from an attack by a pyjama shark, then learned how to protect herself from future predations. My Octopus Teacher provides an invaluable insight into the emotional and physical lives of octopus. Octopus can be reclusive animals and therefore positive and illuminating interactions between them and humans are commonly documented.
I am fortunate to have had my own learning experience, when I inadvertently swam with a blue-ringed octopus in a lagoon on Tasmania’s east coast.
This encounter was entirely accidental and without conflict. Whilst floating lazily in the lagoon I found myself carried by the warm waters towards the rocks that jut from the clear shallows. It was then that I began to feel a strange sensation, as though I was being watched. But there was no one around, as far as I could see, and I was alone in this part of the lagoon. Or so I thought. As I looked around I caught a glimpse of iridescent blue next to a rock roughly 2m away from me. Moving closer and looking under the water, I saw a small face peering back at me; a relatively large blue-ringed octopus the length of my hand was watching me. And they were warning me not to come any closer.
It was a warning I respected.
The blue-ringed octopus is a small creature with a big reputation. Growing up to 20cm in length, one small octopus can have enough neurotoxic venom to kill up to 26 adult humans. Their bite is as small as they are, often painless, but if left untreated can kill within minutes. The venom, tetrodotoxin, causes paralysis (as well as nausea, heart failure and in some cases blindness), with death resulting from suffocation as the diaphragm is paralysed. As a result of this, when blue-ringed octopus appear in Tasmanian waters they swiftly become headline news alerting locals to the danger. Despite this fearful reputation only a handful of deaths have been recorded globally and bites are infrequent.
Maintaining eye contact, I moved away slowly from this octopus who was warning me off, so as not to startle them. But then an extraordinary thing happened. The little octopus followed me. Moving from rock to rock, they trailed me as I floated away. And as they did so, their colours subsided from the bold blue warning rings to a yellowish-dun with slightly darker patches over the skin. As we both stilled in the water we made direct eye-contact, close enough to see one another clearly but just out of each other’s reach.
Many people describe the emotions that are elicited when gazing into the eye of a whale as a deeply profound and life-changing experiencing. Let me tell you, coming eye-to-eye with a tiny octopus who is as curious about you as you are about them is just as profound. Their eyes were like nothing I had seen in person before, with a rectangular pupil positioned horizontally and surrounded by dancing speckles of black, brown and tan on light grey. Their eyes never left me, fixed on me as intently as I was fixed upon watching them. There was no fear between us, only a mutual respect for each others’ spaces and a deep questioning about who the other person was. For that moment in time there was no predator or prey, no threat or threatened; we were just two animals relaxing alongside one another in a free space. Had I been able to visit daily as Foster did in My Octopus Teacher, a relationship of equals may well have emerged. Or perhaps the octopus would have grown tired of this lumbering pink animal entering a habitat not their own and may have moved on. I’ll never know exactly what they truly thought of me; the interaction ended abruptly when a group of shouting children entered the lagoon nearby and the octopus darted away, once again flashing blue. I also do not know how long I had hung suspended in the water with them, as it seemed like an eon over in the blink of an eye. All I know is that behind those eyes was a complex thought system and profound interest; within those eyes there was was someone.
And they had been communicating with me.
The ability of the octopus to communicate is widely documented, and though non-verbal their methods include colour changes, skin texture changes, body posture, and locomotion. We may not recognise these signs as a language, but when you observe them it is certain that octopus are able to speak. They have well-developed brains, and despite being often reclusive are highly-social animals under circumstances that suit them. The octopus whom I met certainly appeared to be inclined towards socialising on their terms. Blue-octopus signal their feelings of agitation or threat with those characteristic blue rings; by no longer flashing blue they were communicating to me that they no longer perceived me to be a threat. Their posture and voluntary following of me communicated a curiousity and a willingness to interact. And in doing so they gifted me a unique experience, to gaze into their eyes and see them as someone.
They spoke to me.
It may seem strange that I did not then use this experience as a prompt towards living vegan. But at the time I really had no understanding or experience of veganism; in fact my encounters with vegans up to this point had largely involved me engaging in outright mockery and verbal abuse. It was still possible for me as a non-vegan to compartmentalise my life; I did not eat slaughtered octopus, but I was still happy to eat the “seafood” chowder my place of work offered. I could go home and lavish care upon Mika, the rainbow lorikeet whom I lived with at the time; but I would do whilst eating a plate of chicken-flesh. I could laugh at vegans, because I did not know them as individuals. But with each experience over time, whether it was learning about the ethics (or lack thereof) of the parrot trade, or encountering vegans with whom I became friends, or communicating with a little blue-ringed octopus who was not afraid of me, the barriers that were essential for that compartmentalisation eroded over time. The last barriers were torn down when I watched The Cove in 2012; watching the blood of dolphins stain the blue waters of Taiji I realised my tears were a hypocrisy when I still consumed products that demanded the spilling of blood. In that moment I chose vegan.
My own octopus teacher broke down a species barrier, and paved the way forwards for me to become the vegan animal liberationist I am today. They were an invaluable part of a process of communication and learning that has shaped me as an individual. The paths towards veganism as an ethical standpoint rejecting the exploitation of other animals, whether kept domestically or free-living, are many and varied. A single person may require several influences and experiences over a period of time before finally making the connections between themselves and the animal world. Sharing our experiences can be a positive way to encourage other people to reconsider their own relationships with animals and the natural world. They can also be important to reframe interactions between humans and other animals, away from the all too common conflictual incidents and towards a relationship of mutual respect and positivity.
This is why I am sharing the story of my own octopus teacher, as a means to encourage others towards reconsidering how they view the other animals around them, and to break down the barriers that enable compartmentalisation. The octopus was so vastly different to me, just as I am so vastly different to a cow, or a kangaroo, or a cat. And yet in that moment those differences were not a reason for either of us to cause harm to one another. Rather, our similarities enabled us to share a moment of connection and communication, and our differences were a cause for interest and not for conflict.
I am so privileged to have known the little blue-ring octopus. They provided me with a moment of clarity and insight simply by meeting me as I was, eye-to-eye, and sharing a moment with me in the clear waters of a warm lagoon.
