Dive Pacific 175 Dec2020 Jan 2021
Dive Pacific, New Zealand's Dive Magazine , captures the best of diving in New Zealand and the Pacific. with adventures, top photos and expert technical advice
Dive Pacific, New Zealand's Dive Magazine , captures the best of diving in New Zealand and the Pacific. with adventures, top photos and expert technical advice
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Rare underwater find for<br />
NIWA photographer<br />
NIWA’s Annual Staff photo competition<br />
LIDAR with Milky Way, Arrival Heights, Antarctica. Photo: Mark Murphy<br />
A NIWA marine ecologist is one<br />
of very few worldwide who have<br />
seen and photographed the<br />
elusive football octopus (Ocythoe<br />
tuberculate).<br />
NIWA’s Crispin Middleton was diving<br />
in November 2019 in the Poor Knights<br />
Marine Reserve when he spotted the<br />
football octopus inside a salp. He has<br />
dived there more than 1000 times<br />
but this was a first, and he hasn’t seen<br />
them since. He suspects the 50 he saw<br />
that day might have been a breeding<br />
aggregation.<br />
Salps are barrel-shaped invertebrate<br />
that resemble jellyfish. Crispin says<br />
that there aren’t many things that eat<br />
salps and the football octopus may<br />
have been hiding in them to avoid<br />
predation from larger fish.<br />
The photograph was judged the<br />
winner of the special award category<br />
in NIWA’s annual staff photographic<br />
competition. The NIWA competition<br />
attracted a large range of entries<br />
featuring some of New Zealand’s<br />
most awe-inspiring locations in which<br />
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