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The octopus in David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II, isa superstar. Her qualities have almost nothing to dowith the stentorian diction and dramatic pacing ofthe famed naturalist’s narration — attributes thatcould enliven even the most incidental of seacreatures. This octopus has it. A magic that radiatesfrom the screen and imprints her larger-than-lifepersonality on the viewer. This octopus is wide

eyed, magnificent and apparently knowing. A deep-seaingénue with an outsize personality and a penchant for thedramatic .

In a seminal scene she fights off a shark. The odds lookbleak. My heart is in my throat. She is firmly clutched in thedread jaws of the beast. She is in a fight to the death. Butshe shoots out two or three of her sinewy arms, andsuffocates the shark by inserting them into its gills. Theshark succumbs to her fighting smarts and shakes her offas he opens his gaping maw and releases her to safety. LikeI said, dramatic.

And you should see her way with camouflage — caug htunwittingly in a stretch of open sea far from her den andthe safety of the kelp forest, she casts around for shells,stone, seaweed and other bits and bobs. Within secondsshe has disappeared — now you see her, now you don’t. Anunblinking, almost digital eye is the only clue she is hiddenin this suddenly manifest rock formation. For her next trickshe outwits a snuffling predator in a sudden puff of ink.You can almost sense her smiling with delight as sheelegantly whooshes away — trailing her limbs like ad an ce r. Her shells, like confetti, fall to the sea bed.

These intimate scenes of octopus life in the wild kelpforest off the Atlantic Seaboard have never been filmed orseen before. Thanks to Craig Foster, an extremely curiousfilmmaker and naturalist, and his daily dive of the pastseven years, we can now witness what I can only describeas a serendipitous love affair between man and octopus.

Foster to his credit is slightlyless romantic and a whole lotmore scientific when I ask him ifit was love at first sight. He is notone to anthropomorphise thenatural world and with theoctopus he named “Super Star”this would be fo ol hardy.

As Amia Srinivasan writes in the London Review ofBooks, “Octopuses frustrate the neat evolutionary divisionbetween clever vertebrates and simple-mindedinvertebrates. They are sophisticated problem solvers; theylearn, and can use tools and they show a capacity formimicry, deception and, some think, humour. Theirintelligence is like ours and utterly unlike ours. Octopusesare the closest we can come on earth to knowing what itmight be like to encounter intelligent aliens.”

And yet. There is something singularly romantic in thisrelationship. Foster says it may never happen again inhis lifetime. The rare and wonderful moment when awild and opaque creature willingly embraces thehuman interloper and gives him, and by extension us,

unprecedented access into her world.“It is a strange thing, they have different personalities,

some are quite bold — others very shy — she was inbetween. She stayed on the periphery for quite a while.From the animals’ perspective they can distinguishbetween different people, but I suppose she would see meso often — and then suddenly there was a big shift. Shecomes over and greets you and knows you are not going toharm her, she becomes curious about you. It is a greatprivilege to step into that world to learn — not like amammal — but like a fellow spineless creature in herinvertebrate world, who understands the intricacies andconnections. It’s amazing. She hunts over 50 species butyou can only find that out when you’re allowed into herden and can pick up the bones of the animals she haseaten. You realise, my goodness, her life is so detailedand crazily connected to everything around her.”

As a result of this unprecedented access into her denFoster and his scientific collaborators, includingProfessor Charles Griffiths, the UCT grandmaster ofmarine science, discovered a new species of shrimp thatcohabits with the octopus. “I felt love for the animal. Icannot say what she felt for me.”

How to understand the alien intelligence of theoctopus? “She is an invertebrate, like a snail without ashell — survival would seem impossible given thenumber of predators with a taste for octopus. But thestructure of their neural network is made of a similarsubstance to our human neural network — so it followsthat some of their thinking and feelings could be similar toours. The deeper you go into understanding animals themore you realise that perhaps we are not that dissimilarfrom each other. And if you watch her every day you realisehow very clever she is. There is no parental input — th eylive a solitary life. They are antisocial — so it is fascinatingto watch her learn. For example, she had to learn how to

hunt lobster. Initially she did not know how — lobsters arewily and fast but within two weeks she had mastered it.

“She had an incredible repertoire of extraordinarybehaviours and can do an enormous number of things, likeher camouflage technique, and assessing when to leave thecamouflage behind. You become absolutely convinced youare dealing with a very curious, highly intelligent, highlyplayful individual. She would play with me, toy with myhand, my body, and I believe she would play with fish. Ihave seen her hunting fish and this was different — th iswas play.”

There is no other footage of an octopus playing with fishin the wild, he muses. “It ’s amazing how she works out allthese things. If you think how slowly we learn as ch i ld renand how much we have to be taught.”

He ’s slowly learning the language of the octopus. “It ’sfascinating. They communicate so much on their skin, the

shapes, textures and bodyposture. Their feelings andthoughts are projected onto thebody itself. Think of what weare saying when we blush — th eoctopus is a thousand timesmore expressive.

But who they arecommunicating with is amystery as they live a solitarylife, mostly alone. Even whenthey mate it happens at a

distance. One tentative arm reaches out and places itssperm packet in the female.”

I wonder when his fascination with the kelp forest andits octopod denizens took hold? “In some ways as a veryyoung child. I lived in a room below the high-water markin Bakoven on the Atlantic Seaboard long before it was apopular place. My father brought me home at three daysold and immersed me in the Atlantic ocean.” Quite thebaptism, I can’t help thinking. “At two he taught me to diveby holding onto his back. If you hold on, around an adult’s

neck, you soon get the feeling for it, it is how I taught myown son. By three I was diving alone — the intertidal kelpforest is a part of my psyche.”

Later he worked in film all over Africa and forgedconnections that gave him a glimpse of what he calls ‘‘d ee pnature ”. “When I worked with the San trackers I learnt thedifference between deep nature and just loving nature.”

What then is deep nature?“It ’s a very different thing. Deep nature is the

matrix of nature — the essence — the motherboard.I realised how very useless I was as an observer ofnature when I was next to a master tracker who

had hundreds of generations of knowledge directlytransmitted to him — every little sign he reads signifiessomething in the past and the future and is passed fromgeneration to generation.

‘‘There ’s something in the modern industrialisedhuman that’s become disconnected from nature. It’sdisturbing to realise that this had happened to me. I waswatching animals, diving withsharks and crocodiles — craz ystuff — but it was superficial.After three years of committingto a project and diving everyday I met this young octopus.She taught me the deep natureexperience. The octopus sits inthe middle of the sea forest —hunts and is hunted — so youcan see the entire universe ofthe kelp forest through hereyes . ”

I suppose she is like a prism— seeing her properly in the full light throws open andreleases all the colours of this neck of the woods. “She wasthe culmination of my curiosity and searching.”

What did he learn from her?“I guess what immediately springs to mind is that the

kelp forest appears to have many, many species — wh ichlive unbelievable lives. It all works together like a giantnatural brain. All the species are in some way linked to allthe others and the forest itself is like a giant brain. If you goin every day — like I have done for seven years now —occasionally you get a glimpse of this giant naturalintelligence .”

I imagine it’s like pulling away the veil or the velvetcurtain in the Wizard of Oz. You finally see the magicianturning the dials.

“Most of the time you’re pottering along andoccasionally this happens. Water tracking is a deep natureprocess. Almost nothing is known about the secret lives ofthese animals. When you watch The Blue Planet you see0.1 % of the mystery. Sometimes when I open that ancientdoor, I feel like I’m in nursery school. Ancient humans hadan incredible advantage over us — they were completelyintegrated with nature. There was no separateness.

‘‘Humans have forgotten the natural law — we don’trealise that environmental disaster will affect everything.All our supposed political and financial problems rest onenvironmental foundations. We think that it will be okay,but we won’t be able to eat or breathe. We’ve stepped outof this process and have completely disconnected from anintelligence that’s superior to ours — far moresophisticated. It makes sense tostop, and to take note and lookand learn from it. For me theoctopus is an ambassador fornature . ”

Then he goes and breaks myheart. Super Star is dead. Herflame, it seems, burns brightand furious and fast. She is anOctopus vulgaris, a commonoctopus and they live extremelyshort lives — a maximum of twoyears .

“Octopus years are like 50 human ones. Time did feelvery different down there with her. One month is theequivalent of five years. It’s unlikely I’ll ever be able to do itagain — most octopus move from den to den very quicklyor get taken by a shark. If they manage to mate, they startto care for their eggs and get weak as they stop hunting andeating. They die as the youngsters hatch. The focus is onthe next generation and they seem to know they’re dying.This is their great evolutionary survival trick — they turnover new generations very fast, laying up to half a millioneggs of which only a very small percentage survive. But it’sa clever way to survive for over 200 million years.” ●LS

Craig Foster is working on a documentary and a book aboutthe octopus for release in December 2018. He establishedthe Sea Change Trust with Ross Frylinck and Carina Rubin-Frankal. Green Seas, the episode of Blue Planet II featuringthe octopus airs March 4 at 4pm on BBC Earth. ●LS

GETTINGDEEP

WITH ANOCTOPUS

For the first time octopuslife in the wild kelp forests of

the Atlantic Seaboard hasbeen filmed.

By Aspasia Karras

OCTOPUS FACT#1The Octopus has no

fixed shape and can fitthrough openings the

size of its eye.

OCTOPUS FACT#3At the University ofOtago, the octopus

shot jets of water at thelaboratory lights to

short-circuit theelectricity and escape— so often that theyeventually released it

back into the wild.

Craig Foster

Cameraman Roger Horricks filming an octopus for ’Blue Planet II’ Pictures: Seachange Project

OCTOPUS FACT#2It has no stable colours

or texture and canchange at will to match

its surroundings.The chromatic

displays on its body canbe very elaborate, but

it’s colour blind.

OCTOPUS FACT#4There’s no distinctionbetween its brain and

its body — two thirds ofits half a billion neurons

are in its arms. Eacharm can act intelligently

on its own and hunt,grasp and manipulate

independently.