A new video of a woman helping an octopus has taken Twitter by storm.
From the biggest whales to the smallest fish, the ocean is full of remarkable animals. With such busy lives, it can be easy to forget about the creatures that call our biggest bodies of water home. Sometimes, though, we’re reminded of just how amazing they are. Our latest reminder is a viral video of a woman who found an octopus washed up onshore. After finding the creature, the woman then spent the next few months helping it protect its eggs.
Woman helps octopus and slowly befriends it
The video comes to us courtesy of The Dodo, but the real star of the show is marine biologist Sheree Marris. Marris says she found the octopus one day while walking along the beach. She says that the octopus was protecting a tube that it had washed ashore in. She saw tons of tiny eggs when she looked inside the tube.
Marris noted that many times fisherpeople will drop tubes like the one she found in the water. Usually, the tubes are meant to lure in octopuses, so that they are easier to catch.
“Because we were so worried about her washing back up on the beach, I found a brick and some rope,” Marris explained in the video. They then attached the tube to the brick using the rope and took it out deeper into the ocean.
Over the course of the next few months, Marris would visit the octopus each day. She named it Casey because it means “warrior-mother”.
“Her first instinct is to protect her babies,” Marris said. “But then a couple of times I would go out there, she would put her arm out.”
Trouble strikes
Marris continued to visit Casey each day until a big storm hit the shoreline where the octopus lived. The storm was so bad, Marris was unable to visit for a bit. When she did finally return, Casey was nowhere to be seen. The tube with her babies was missing, too.
“My heart absolutely sank,” Marris said in the video. A few weeks passed, however, and Marris found Casey, washed up on the seagrass. She wasn’t in good shape. Marris also says that they found the tube with Casey’s eggs less than five meters away from her.
With the eggs and mother reunited, Marris and her friend put together a sturdier structure. They then took the octopus back out into the ocean and situated it at the bottom once again. Marris says that when she visited Casey again, the creature didn’t appear to be scared of her.
Alongside the video, Marris also documented the entire ordeal on her Instagram page. It’s incidents like this that remind us of how important it is to protect the life that calls our world home. After all, we aren’t the only creatures that walk, or swim, along this Earth.
