He looks so much happier now ❤️
Pall Sigurdsson and his friends had no idea they’d end up playing “realtor” to a little sea creature in desperate need of a new home when they set out on a diving expedition in the waters off Indonesia last December.
Sigurdsson discovered this while exploring near the ocean floor: a tiny coconut octopus hiding inside a clear plastic cup.
Seeing waste polluting the underwater environment was heartbreaking enough, but Sigurdsson concluded that this specific piece of trash was actually endangering life.
Not only was it failing to conceal the octopus, but any predators hunting for an easy meal would almost certainly consume the cup as well.
So Sigurdsson and his team got to work. They spent the rest of their dive scouring the seafloor for a more suitable home, gently offering the octopus various clamshells until he found one he liked.
Here’s a video of that awesome process:
Time was of the essence during this little house-hunting mission, as the group’s air supply was soon dwindling, but thankfully the betentacled animal eventually made his choice.
“Coconut octopus are famous for being very picky about which shells they keep,” Sigurdsson wrote online. “So we had to try with many different shells before it found one to be acceptable.”
The octopus is finally safe, but the problem of pollution in his home isn’t just his.
“We tend to focus on plastic pollution because it is simple to see and realize how horrible it is since it floats,” Sigurdsson told The Dodo. “I dive ocean floors all over the world, and the amount of rubbish on the bottom is really staggering.”
Every year, from 4.8 to 12.7 metric tons of plastic enter the Earth’s seas, endangering the lives of countless species. That massive scale can be difficult to comprehend, but hopefully the story of this little creature’s housing experience will bring this issue home.
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