Over 4,000 feet below the ocean surface was an octopus mother who used her body to shield her young for four and a half years.
After the Graneledone boreopacifica laid a batch of eggs, she protected these until they latched without even eating. This period is four times longer than most octopuses live in shallow water and it is the longest brooding time known of any specie on the planet, including emperor penguins and elephants.
The octopus broke the previous record for prenatal guardianship of the alpine salamander which internally keeps its offspring for about four years. Most animals which lay eggs guard them for a shorter time. The Magellan plunderfish is the record-holder fish and it only stays above its eggs for about four or five months. The Bathypolypus arcticus was believed to be the octopus with the longest guarding time of 14 months before observations on the California cephalopod surfaced.
The broadcast spawn strategy is when an animal lets go of thousands of eggs into the water and leaves them. Most eggs and juveniles get eaten by predators but a few can reach adulthood. The deep-sea creature produces a small number of eggs ranging from 155 to 165 only and watches them until the babies are well-developed and have a good chance at survival.
The octopus was discovered only by observational luck. Lead researcher Bruce Robison was riding a robotic vehicle at around 1,400 meters or 4,500 feet off the central California coast. He captured a video of an octopus crawling to a rock wall full of brooding octopuses. One month later, a Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute deep-sea biologist and Robison's team noticed the easily identifiable purple and scarring octopus attached on the rock curled over her transparent eggs. The researchers went back 18 times before the family disappeared, leaving only over 150 broken eggshells behind.
"It got to be like a sports team we were rooting for," study author Robison said. "We wanted her to survive and to succeed. Each time we went down, it was more of a surprise. We found her there again and again and again, past the point that anybody expected she'd persist."
