“One word: epic.”
Here’s how a Vancouver Island dive driver described a recent eight-piece underwater encounter.
Andrea Humphreys is a teacher in the Campbell River area and an experienced diver. In 12 years, she has logged about 675 dives, but in all that time she has never seen anything like what she captured on video last week.
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Humphreys and a group of divers had set out to take a Newfoundland friend who had never seen an octopus to try and see one of the cephalopods near Argonaut Pier on the Campbell River.
“Within probably two minutes, there’s an octopus sitting there in the kelp right out in the open … almost unheard of during the day,” she told Global News.
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“Then the octopus got on this man who had never seen an octopus before and climbed all over his face and mask.”
0:31 BC Diver captures ‘epic’ encounter with octopus
That alone would be a thrill for the band, but things didn’t stop there.
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The creature, which Humphreys identified as a giant Pacific octopus, seemed to lose interest and got off his friend — and glared at Humphreys.
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What followed was a nearly 40-minute interaction with the multi-armed sea creature, during which it climbed all over her mask, face and camera.
“He was just coming back to me, he wasn’t interested in anyone else. It was just amazing to see and experience,” she said.
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“You can kind of hear my excitement in the video, my screaming and yelling, it was just general underwater conversation because I was so incredibly excited … I’ve been diving for so long and I’ve never had an encounter like this and to finally be able to have one and you’ve had it for so long, so long – words can’t even describe it.
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As Humphries and the octopus got to know each other, she said her friends sat back and laughed, enjoying the spectacle.
The diver told Global News that she has had a few encounters with animals in her diving career, but nothing this close and personal. Divers are prohibited from approaching wildlife, she said, so the animal must come to you.
Now she is sharing the footage of the unforgettable encounter, hoping to generate public interest and awareness of the incredible life that thrives unseen beneath the surface of our oceans.
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“As a teacher, I think we can all learn,” she said. “Having footage like this where people see footage of an octopus – you see their heads, their eyes, you never really see underneath the octopus and for it to lift up, spread out, you can see inside the suckers … it was such a great experience , that I had to share it.’
© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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