An enchanting new video shows a “once in a lifetime encounter” with a strange, bright octopus swimming over the Great Barrier Reef in northeastern Australia.
The confrontation, first reported by local Australian news site Bundaberg Now, was a rare sighting of a Shamil octopus. Marine biologist and reef guide Jacinta Shackleton photographed an octopus while diving off the coast of Queensland’s Lady Elliot Island on January 6.
“When I first saw it, I thought it might have been a small fish with long fins, but as I got closer I realized it was an octopus and I was so excited I couldn’t contain the excitement!” Shackleton said.
Blanket octopuses are a small group of rarely seen octopuses in the genus Tremoctopus, according to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, a nonprofit that works to protect the famous coral reef. Shackleton met the young female in shallow water, which is especially rare because these octopuses usually live in the open ocean.
“The colors in her gown were amazing and it was great to watch the way she moved through the water,” Shackleton wrote on her Instagram account, where she posted the video and photos of the meeting.
Female octopuses are about 6.6 feet (2 meters) long, while males are less than 1 inch (2.4 centimeters) long, according to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. This is one of the largest differences in size between the sexes of any animal.
Blanket octopuses are also famous for their strange hunting strategy of tearing apart the tentacles of poisonous jellyfish and using them as a weapon to catch prey.