Octopuses gather at warm deep-sea site because it speeds up egg hatching

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Thousands of brooding octopus mothers gather at a spot 3200 metres deep off the coast of California because warmer water there dramatically reduces hatching times



Life



2 March 2022

By Michael Le Page

A cluster of deep sea octopus Muusoctopus robustus at Davidson Seamount, off California.

A cluster of octopuses at Davidson Seamount off the coast of California

Ocean Exploration Trust/NOAA

Thousands of octopus mothers lay and tend their eggs at a deep-sea site with warm hydrothermal vents because it dramatically reduces hatching times, from more than 14 years to under two years.

“They have about a 90 per cent reduction in brood period because, I think, they are brooding in warm water,” said Jim Barry at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California, during a virtual talk at the Ocean Sciences Meeting 2022.

In 2018, other researchers …