Hawaiian Day Octopus (Octopus cyanea)

Date taken: July 22, 2014 at 5:42pm
Dive site: Manuka Bay, Hawaii (Kona side, just Northwest of South Point)

I think it was the Hawaiian day octopus that really made me first fall in love with cephalopods. I actually found a video from 1998 where I interacted with one (check it out on YouTube).

And, it's the Hawaiian day octopus that is both fun to find (they're fairly large with a mantle of 16 cm and arms to at least 80 cm) and incredibly inquisitive. I can almost always count on them for a few minutes of fun playing hide and seek. My favorite moment is the "yip-yip-martian-moment" when they're stretching themselves up really high to see where you've gone. This is one of those moments...

My iNaturalist observation: 5090952
Wikipedia link: Octopus_cyanea