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La sorprendente y conmovedora Historia de una Amistad entre un Humano y un Pulpo
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00:02:47We had this little wooden bungalow, literally below the high water mark.
00:02:52So when those huge storms used to come in, the ocean used to smash the doors down and fill up
00:02:58the bottom of the house.
00:03:04So it was incredibly exciting as a child to literally live in the force of that giant Atlantic ocean.
00:03:20Most of my childhood was spent in the rock pools, diving in the shallow kelp forest.
00:03:30That's what I most loved to do.
00:03:35And as an adult I'd been separated from that.
00:03:40And that was fine at first, until I went to the central Kalahari about 20 years ago.
00:03:59I was making a film called The Great Dance with my brother and then I met these men who were
00:04:06probably some of the best trackers in the world.
00:04:12To watch these men go into these incredible subtle signs in nature, things that my eye couldn't even see and
00:04:22then follow them sometimes for hours and find hidden animals in the landscape was just extraordinary to witness.
00:04:32I mean they just were inside of the natural world and I could feel I was outside and I had
00:04:45this deep longing to be inside that world.
00:04:58I went through two years of absolute hell.
00:05:05I had been working hard for a long time and I'd just worn myself out.
00:05:12I hadn't slept properly for months.
00:05:16My family was suffering.
00:05:21And I was getting sick from all the pressure.
00:05:28My mind couldn't deal with all that stuff.
00:05:33And I didn't want to see a camera or an edit suite ever again.
00:05:37I couldn't even face that.
00:05:42Your great purpose in life is now just in pieces.
00:05:52And you've got this young child that's growing up, Tom.
00:06:01I just couldn't in that state be a good father to my son.
00:06:10I had to have a radical change.
00:06:15And I took inspiration from my childhood and I took inspiration from these master trackers that I'd work with in
00:06:22the Kalahari.
00:06:25And the only way I knew to do it was to be in this ocean.
00:06:35In the beginning, it's a hard thing to get in the water.
00:06:40It's one of the wildest, most scary places to swim on the planet.
00:06:55The water drops to as low as eight, nine degrees Celsius.
00:07:02The cold takes your breath away.
00:07:09And you just have to relax.
00:07:15And then you'll get this beautiful window of time, or 10, 15 minutes.
00:07:22Suddenly, everything feels okay.
00:07:33The cold upgrades the brain.
00:07:37Because you're getting this flood of chemicals every time you immerse in that cold water.
00:07:45Your whole body comes alive.
00:07:50And then, as your body adapts, it just becomes easier and easier.
00:08:02And eventually, after about a year, you start to crave the cold.
00:08:25What's so amazing about this environment is you're in a three-dimensional forest,
00:08:31and you can jump off the top and go wherever you want.
00:08:35You're flying, basically.
00:08:41You might as well be on another planet.
00:08:49You naturally just get more relaxed in the water.
00:08:55You get to be able to hold your breath for longer.
00:09:03Having a scuba tank in a thick kelp forest is not optimal for me.
00:09:14I want to be more like an amphibious animal.
00:09:27Instinctively, I knew not to wear a wetsuit.
00:09:33If you really want to get close to an environment like this, it helps tremendously to have no barrier to
00:09:42that environment.
00:09:51And I suddenly realized I've got energy to take images and film again.
00:09:57And then picked up my camera again and started doing the thing I love and what I know.
00:10:07The animals are extremely exotic and strange.
00:10:26It's like much more extreme than our maddest science fiction.
00:10:55I remember that day when it all started.
00:11:01I found this very, very special area that is protected with a big piece of kelp forest.
00:11:08Because the forest itself actually dampens the swell.
00:11:21And the whole forest around there is absolutely murky and you can't see a thing.
00:11:26And in this little 200-meter patch, you can dive and observe.
00:11:31And it's an incredible place.
00:11:41I remember there was this strange shape to my left and just going down and seeing this really strange thing.
00:12:11The fish even seem to be confused.
00:12:23And then suddenly, at the time I didn't know I'd witnessed something extraordinary.
00:12:41I come in at the end of a whole drama.
00:12:49You think, what on earth is this animal doing?
00:12:55And I think she was a little bit afraid of me.
00:12:57So she lifted this incredibly slippery piece of algae that you can hardly hold with your hands.
00:13:04And just wrap it in this extraordinary cloak around her and then stare at me out of the little gap.
00:13:18And then, boom, you know, she was gone.
00:13:44It's a hard thing to explain, but sometimes you just get a feeling.
00:13:49And you know there's something to this creature that's very unusual.
00:13:58There's something to learn here.
00:14:04There's something special about her.
00:14:17And then I had this crazy idea.
00:14:19What happens if I just went every day?
00:14:22What happens if I never missed a day?
00:14:35And initially she was clearly being affected by my presence.
00:14:39So I thought, oh, I'll just leave the camera there.
00:14:41And then that will record her going about her business.
00:14:49She sees the shiny new thing in the forest.
00:14:58Coming at it with a shield.
00:15:01Just in case it attacked and put up the shield.
00:15:08This is now something different.
00:15:10This is interesting.
00:15:13Touching it, feeling it, tasting it.
00:15:21Sometimes if you're in a playful mood, you couldn't leave it there for too long.
00:15:25If you just pull the thing over.
00:15:43It took going in every day to really get to know her environment better.
00:15:51Initially, it all just seems like much of the same thing.
00:15:57But then after a while, you see all the different types of the forest.
00:16:03You get the old growth forest.
00:16:08You get the forest with a lot of different algae growing in the bottom.
00:16:13You get the misty forest.
00:16:23As I started to map the environment around her den,
00:16:29it was shocking to see small caves really close to her,
00:16:33packed with pajama sharks.
00:16:36And they really are her most serious predator.
00:16:41Their skin is striped, as that's what they call a pajama shark.
00:16:47They're not visual predators.
00:16:51But they have an incredible sense of smell.
00:16:58And they are particularly aggressive.
00:17:10They can shove their noses into a small crack.
00:17:16So they are deadly little octopus predators.
00:17:21And I was thinking, well, how long before something happens with these animals?
00:17:42After visiting her more and more and more, there was a definite moment where that fear had subsided tremendously.
00:17:59She'd see a big movement and she'd be slightly afraid and then, look, oh, it's him.
00:18:04And she'd come out and be very curious.
00:18:12Very interested, very curious, but not taking stupid chances.
00:18:18Keeping all the other arms attached to the den and the suckers in place.
00:18:35And then it just happens.
00:18:37I put my hand out a tiny bit.
00:19:07To be continued
00:19:13Something happens when that animal mags contact.
00:19:29But at some point you're going to have to breathe.
00:19:34So you've got to very gently prise off those suckers without disturbing her so that you can actually go up
00:19:45and take a breath.
00:20:02By far the most powerful is when it comes out the den.
00:20:07Because that's when you know there's full trust.
00:20:10There's no holding the arms back just in case I have to pull back.
00:20:14It's like I totally trust this human and I'm coming out of the den and I'm going to go about
00:20:22my business.
00:20:34I started to see pretty extraordinary things.
00:20:40They can look spiky, they can look smooth.
00:20:46Grow horns on their heads.
00:20:52They can match colour, texture, pattern, skin.
00:20:56It's beautiful.
00:21:13Most of the time she's jetting or crawling or swimming.
00:21:18But occasionally two legs come out.
00:21:26She walks.
00:21:29And off she goes striding away, walking bipedally.
00:21:38She puts her body into this strange posture that kind of looks like a rock.
00:21:46And then two of those arms underneath slowly moving.
00:21:51So the rock is just slowly moving away.
00:21:59And then she changes into this extraordinary, wobbly, flowy, old lady in her dress.
00:22:08Perhaps she's trying to mimic kelp or algae moving in the swell.
00:22:15And at the same time slowly moving away.
00:22:20And this is how she works.
00:22:22This incredible creativity to deceive.
00:22:29An octopus is essentially a snail that's lost its shell in evolution.
00:22:34Very fragile, liquid, soft animal that relies on tremendous intelligence.
00:22:42She's got no mother or father to teach her anything.
00:22:45She's alone.
00:22:46She's got all these different type of predators all hunting her.
00:22:54So over millions of years, she's had to come up with the most incredible methods to deceive them.
00:23:06And she's got to learn fast because she's only got just over a year to live.
00:23:25When you're diving alone, everything about my kit has to be perfect.
00:23:33And I've got to be prepared for all eventualities.
00:23:36I can't be fiddling around.
00:23:37It's got to be totally instinctive.
00:23:45But at that point, I was making a lot of mistakes.
00:23:53One day, she was following me.
00:23:55And that's the most incredible thing, is to be followed by an octopus.
00:23:58You know, you're just backing away, moving backwards.
00:24:02And this incredible animal is coming towards you.
00:24:04And you know, there's not a lot of fear in it at all.
00:24:06It's curious, and there's this trust, and it's like this fantastic feeling.
00:24:20And then, bam, it dropped one of my lenses.
00:24:24And that thing falling quickly just startles that animal.
00:24:28And then it turns and rushes, and it's got a huge fright.
00:24:39And you just want to kick yourself, because it's, you know, that could have ended in the most incredible interaction
00:24:47and deep trust, and you've ruined it.
00:24:49Now, you know, have you ruined it forever?
00:24:53Is that animal ever going to trust you?
00:24:55Has that experience freaked it out too much?
00:25:01And then I approached her too fast.
00:25:04And that's when she left the den, and got a real fright, and didn't come back to that den.
00:25:16And I thought this was over.
00:25:19She was gone.
00:25:20She was gone.
00:25:34I'd had this experience with these incredible sandmaster trackers.
00:25:39I just thought, I wonder if anybody could ever track anything underwater.
00:25:50This animal has spent millions of years learning to be impossible to find.
00:26:05I had to learn what octopus tracks looked like.
00:26:10And it was very frustrating at first.
00:26:13So difficult to discern what's the difference between octopus tracks and heart urchin tracks,
00:26:19and fish tracks,
00:26:22and worm tracks,
00:26:25and the predation marks,
00:26:29the egg casings.
00:26:34I needed to learn everything.
00:26:48And then you have to start thinking, like an octopus.
00:26:59It's like being a detective.
00:27:01And you just slowly get all your clues together.
00:27:04I'm here to do that.
00:27:05And I'm fine.
00:27:10I love you.
00:27:14Yeah, I love you.
00:27:28I love you.
00:27:28I love you.
00:27:28I love you.
00:27:29I love you.
00:27:30But you don't, you know you love me.
00:27:36And then I started to make breakthroughs.
00:27:46Okay, those are the animals she's killing.
00:27:56So I'm looking at kills, I'm looking at little marks, diggings in the sand,
00:28:01little changes in the algal patterns where she's been moving.
00:28:04And then knowing, okay, this animal is very close now.
00:28:09It's close, it's within one or two meters.
00:28:11And then focusing on that small space.
00:28:20And then, bang, she's there.
00:28:30Finally, after looking for her for a week, day after day, there she was.
00:28:42It's like a human friend, like, waving and saying hi and excited to see you.
00:28:53And I could feel it, like, from one minute to the next.
00:28:57Okay, I trust you.
00:28:58I trust you, human.
00:29:00And now you can come into my octopus world.
00:29:13And she's moving towards me.
00:29:15And my natural instinct is to gently back away.
00:29:24And then I just wanted to keep still, so I held onto a rock.
00:29:34But she just kept coming, and then covered my whole hand.
00:29:39And I'd been underwater for quite a long time.
00:29:42So I just gently pushed for the surface, thinking she would move off my hand.
00:29:49But she didn't.
00:29:50She just rode on my hand right to the surface.
00:30:10There I was, just staring into the eyes of this incredible creature.
00:30:40It was very difficult to imagine at first that she was getting anything out of the relationship.
00:30:45Why would a wild animal doing its thing get anything out of this strange human creature visiting?
00:30:56And this is where it gets interesting.
00:31:03I think quite stimulating for that huge intelligence.
00:31:15Somehow she realises this thing is not dangerous.
00:31:19So you go and you interact with this human.
00:31:25And perhaps it does give you some strange octopus level of joy.
00:31:31And perhaps it does give you some strange octopus level of joy.
00:31:52It does give you some strange animals.
00:31:53It does give you some strange animals.
00:31:58It does give you some strange animals.
00:32:00It does give you some strange animals.
00:32:01When you have that connection with that animal and have those experiences, it's absolutely mind-blowing.
00:32:13There's no greater feeling on earth.
00:32:23The boundaries between her and I seem to dissolve.
00:32:30Just the pure magnificence of her.
00:32:32Just the pure magnificence of her.
00:32:34And I just love you.Ù
00:33:05All I could do at the time was just think of her in the water and on land.
00:33:14I mean, it just became a bit of an obsession.
00:33:17You just want to visit her every single day and see what's going on.
00:33:21You can't wait to get back in the water.
00:33:39What goes through her mind?
00:33:41What's she thinking?
00:33:44Does she dream?
00:33:45If she dreams, what does she dream about?
00:33:59She just ignited my curiosity in a way that I had not experienced before.
00:34:14It's very useful to come back home and try and read as many scientific papers as possible.
00:34:23She's a common octopus.
00:34:25Octopus vulgaris is the scientific name.
00:34:30Two thirds of her cognition is actually outside of her brain, in her arms.
00:34:37Her entire being is thinking, feeling, exploring.
00:34:44She's got 2,000 suckers and she's using all of them independently.
00:34:49How do you do that?
00:34:50Imagine having 2,000 fingers.
00:34:55You can compare her intelligence to a cat or a dog or even to one of the lower primates.
00:35:02A mollusk shouldn't be this intelligent.
00:35:07So many times I'd go and search through the scientific papers looking for the strange thing I'd seen.
00:35:15And then you just come up absolutely blank.
00:35:17There's nothing.
00:35:21You're going into a place that's understudied and almost on a weekly basis you can find out something new to
00:35:28science.
00:35:46According to the literature, octopus are supposed to be a nocturnal species.
00:36:00Now, was she more active at night?
00:36:13A little bit scary in the dark.
00:36:18These incredible sounds of the humpback whales coming through the water.
00:36:29You're on hyper alert.
00:36:48I couldn't find her. She wasn't in her den.
00:36:53I'd kind of given up and was going back to the shore.
00:37:01Something just made me veer slightly to the left.
00:37:09And there she is.
00:37:12Right in extremely shallow water.
00:37:17Can't see what she's doing.
00:37:27These lightning fast strikes.
00:37:34Using her arm like the strange weapon.
00:37:40Just rolling it up in this fraction of a second.
00:37:50And I saw her catch three fish like this.
00:37:53I've never seen her catching a fish during the day.
00:38:00Super dangerous out in the deeper forest at night.
00:38:03This incredibly clever animal retreats to the shallows where it's difficult for these sharks to get to.
00:38:09And takes advantage of all the wonderful food available there.
00:38:13I've never seen her catch five.
00:38:26And it's insane.
00:38:28Just owning a fish.
00:38:28We've got to try and find them.
00:38:28You just know what you have to say to us.
00:38:30And maybe I'm a fan of these species.
00:38:30And maybe I'm a fan of failure in the week.
00:38:31And maybe I just need to try and find them.
00:38:43And if the mind is coming back at night.
00:38:43The first instinct is to try and scare the sharks away.
00:38:48But then you realize that you'll be interfering
00:38:52with the whole process of the forest.
00:39:03She was out of the den,
00:39:06moving around near the edge of the forest.
00:39:16I noticed the shark.
00:39:26The body was slightly hunched forward
00:39:27and was following the scent trail.
00:39:32This is not good.
00:39:55I think, thank God, she's safe.
00:39:57She's right under the rock.
00:40:02These things are coming right into that crack.
00:40:12And the next minute,
00:40:13the shark is actually clamped down on one of her arms,
00:40:17doing this terrifying death roll.
00:40:31And I can clearly see her severed arm in its mouth.
00:40:42You hear that terrible feeling in your stomach?
00:41:04And thank God, she managed to get really deep in that crack.
00:41:13And thank God she managed to get really deep in that crack.
00:41:26She was moving very badly, slowly, very weak.
00:41:40She's bleeding that smells in the water.
00:41:49That's quite a distance to the den.
00:41:59Are these sharks going to pitch up again?
00:42:15I thought about helping her back physically to the den.
00:42:28But luckily I didn't need to.
00:42:49I didn't know what was going to happen to her
00:42:53or if this would make her weak and vulnerable
00:42:55and they'd finish her off that night.
00:43:05And I couldn't help feeling,
00:43:07had I been responsible for this?
00:43:11Was she out because I was there?
00:43:14I felt very vulnerable.
00:43:17As if somehow what happened to her
00:43:20happened to me in some strange way.
00:43:29And then this almost felt psychologically
00:43:32like I was going through a type of dismembering.
00:43:37You start thinking about your own death
00:43:39and your own vulnerability.
00:43:42Worried about your family or child.
00:43:46I hadn't been a person
00:43:49that was overly sentimental towards animals before.
00:43:52I realised I was changing.
00:43:56She was teaching me to become sensitised to the other.
00:44:00Especially wild creatures.
00:44:28It was a scary feeling going into the water early in the next day.
00:44:46I was very relieved that she was alive, breathing.
00:44:54She's so weak that she can't make those vibrant colours
00:44:57of a healthy octopus and she's just dull and white.
00:45:10And now I'm worried, how's she getting food?
00:45:19You are crossing a line when you interfere in the lives of animals.
00:45:24But I was just too overcome with my feelings for her.
00:45:37I don't think it really helped.
00:45:41And she's right at the back of the den.
00:45:45And, you know, just not moving much.
00:45:51I was just checking every day to see if she was okay.
00:45:55Wondering, is this the last day?
00:45:56Am I not going to see her?
00:46:13The big relief came a week or so later.
00:46:17And I could see it sort of healed over pretty fast.
00:46:26And then the most amazing thing, to see this tiny little miniature, perfect miniature arm starting to grow back.
00:46:46And it gave me a strange sort of confidence that she can get past this incredible difficulty.
00:46:54And I felt in my life I was getting past the difficulties I had.
00:47:01And in a strange way our lives were mirroring each other.
00:47:12My relationship with people, with humans, was changing.
00:47:20My son, at this stage, was very interested in everything underwater.
00:47:44And every day I'd tell him the stories.
00:47:54He'd seen her, he'd met her.
00:47:56I'd taken him so many times.
00:48:03The arm becomes pretty functional, even when it's half grown.
00:48:24And then slowly as the arm grew, she grew her confidence back.
00:48:33Eventually, about a hundred days later, that arm had fully regrown.
00:48:46Amazing feeling to think that this animal is capable of that and can withstand such an attack and fully recover.
00:49:17After a while, she was just carrying on with her normal activity.
00:49:22So I then started a whole new development of seeing even deeper into her world.
00:49:36It was a nice, calm, clear day.
00:49:41She comes around a corner and spots a crab.
00:49:48The problem when you're a crab, you're being now hunted by a liquid animal.
00:49:55She can pour herself through a tiny little crack.
00:50:07And the crab seems to sense her and goes and hides underneath a big, poisonous an enemy.
00:50:19And then she waits and hides.
00:50:46And then the crab thinks, OK, everything's all right, and makes the mistake of leaving that an enemy.
00:51:22TARICS
00:51:23Samplely
00:51:23I don't know.
00:51:53I don't know.
00:52:35I'm just quite a messy eater, bits going everywhere, the smell's going out.
00:52:40And then you just look around, and you see these brittle stars, surprisingly fast, just
00:52:47being drawn to her.
00:52:55Just a mass of them sort of overwhelm her, and she doesn't seem sure of what to do or
00:53:00how to deal with them.
00:53:04So I thought, yeah, this is like a real problem now.
00:53:07She's always going to have this problem of brittle stars taking all her food.
00:53:16Not that long in the future, she's thought, okay, brittle stars stealing my food, and has
00:53:24this amazing method of just picking them up with the suckers and gently just throwing them
00:53:28out the dam.
00:53:32Now she's completely the boss.
00:53:43She initially adopted the same method to crab hunting with lobster.
00:53:51You just suddenly see lobster just shooting out of the reef.
00:54:16And I'm thinking now, oh, she's definitely going to catch this one.
00:54:30Time and time again, they just evade her.
00:54:40And then a couple of weeks later, watching her come around the side, corralling me so that
00:54:49she can then get between the lobster and myself, using me as part of her hunting strategy.
00:55:00Instead of that messy lunge, throwing her web over the top.
00:55:10And then there's nowhere for it to go.
00:55:20This is an animal that is strategizing and working out very quickly how best to hunt a very tricky prey.
00:55:36A lot of her intelligence is built from the sheer number of prey that she has to catch.
00:55:43All sorts of animals.
00:55:46All the mollusks she's capturing, they're quite easy to catch.
00:55:50But they've got these incredibly hard shells.
00:55:57Now how the hell does she kill and eat them?
00:56:05At the base of all those arms, there's a drill that can drill through hard shell.
00:56:13And then drop venom in there like a snake and see how that mollusk reacts.
00:56:23But some of these mollusks will only relax if that drill is precisely in the apex of the shell, the
00:56:31abductor muscle.
00:56:35She basically has to do geometry to work out exactly the precise spot where she needs to drill that shell
00:56:43in order to get her food.
00:56:48This is high level invertebrate intelligence.
00:56:52Her ability to learn and remember details.
00:57:00And it hit me how she was teaching me so much.
00:57:10You just can't wait to get up in the morning because there's so much to do to understand every little
00:57:17tiny mark,
00:57:19every little behaviour, every species, what they're doing, how they're interacting.
00:57:33People ask, why are you going to the same place every day?
00:57:37But that's when you see the subtle differences.
00:57:40And that's when you get to know the wild.
00:57:46So we know these thousands of threads going off from the octopus to all the other animals, predator and prey.
00:57:52And then this incredible forest just nurturing all of this.
00:58:01And now I know how the helmet shell is connected to the urchin and how the octopus is connected to
00:58:07the helmet shell.
00:58:08And as I draw all these lines, all these stories are just being thrown up.
00:58:28It's almost like the forest mind really could feel it, that big creature.
00:58:36It was thousands of times more awake and intelligent than I am.
00:58:42It's like a giant underwater brain operating over millions of years.
00:58:50And it just keeps everything in balance.
00:59:04Everything seemed at this point sort of perfect in the forest.
00:59:15And of course, you know, you've forgotten.
00:59:20Those predators are ever present.
00:59:51Whistling
01:00:05I just have this burnt in my memory, this huge shock just suddenly approaching her.
01:00:21She kept still and tried to hide, and you just saw the shark swimming on the periphery picking
01:00:33up her scent, and I thought, oh no, it's all nightmare happening again.
01:00:47I'm sorry.
01:01:02I'm sorry.
01:01:09I'm sorry.
01:01:16Let's go.
01:01:45She jets up in the canopy, and she's wrapping many leaves of kelp tightly around her body, and then just
01:01:54peering out.
01:02:21All the smells on the kelp, so the sharks are now biting and snapping at the kelp.
01:02:44She's shot out the back.
01:03:00She just climbs out of a rock and leaves the water.
01:03:08I just, you know, almost can't believe my eyes.
01:03:16But the problem is, of course, she's got to come back.
01:03:29On the other side, the shark picks up her scent again, and this crazy chase is on.
01:03:48She's got to come back.
01:03:50She's got to come back.
01:04:07And then I see her in a very quick movement, picking up maybe close to a hundred shells in stone.
01:04:20And then folding her arms over her vulnerable head.
01:04:26And in that moment, I realized this is this crazy thing I saw so long ago.
01:04:59Next minute, the shark grabs her.
01:05:24But I had to breathe, rush to the surface as fast as you can.
01:05:31Straight back down again.
01:05:38And it's like, OK, now, this is too crazy.
01:05:42Somehow she's managed to maneuver herself
01:05:45into the least dangerous place,
01:05:47and that's on the shark's back.
01:06:01And the shark tries to shake her off and is swimming away.
01:06:06It takes a few seconds to figure out
01:06:09what the hell's going on here.
01:06:10But you can immediately tell she's now got the upper hand.
01:06:27As the shark goes near some of the thick kelp,
01:06:32she just pushes off the back.
01:06:46Drops the remaining shells and jets away.
01:06:56And the shark has just been completely outwitted.
01:07:32The shark comes, dance one pass, but she's completely safe.
01:07:37There's nothing it can do.
01:07:39And it leaves.
01:07:45How she can think that quickly
01:07:47and make those life and death decisions,
01:07:51it's just, you know, pretty, pretty incredible.
01:08:17I was around for a good 80% of her life.
01:08:24Each moment is so precious because it's so short.
01:08:30There was this one incredible day.
01:08:33Big shoal of dream fish.
01:08:37Fairly shallow water.
01:08:41Suddenly, she's reaching up for the surface like that.
01:08:51Initially, I thought, she's hunting the fish.
01:09:01Then I was like, hold on.
01:09:04When she hunts, she's strategic and she's, like, focused.
01:09:14This behavior doesn't feel predatory to me.
01:09:21It took a long time to actually, like, process it.
01:09:26But I couldn't help thinking, she's playing with the fish.
01:09:44You see play often in social animals.
01:09:48Here's a highly antisocial animal playing with fish.
01:09:56It takes an animal to a different level.
01:10:10Oh, then she completely lost interest in the fish.
01:10:13Rushed over.
01:10:17Grabbed hold of me.
01:10:30And that was the last time we had physical contact.
01:10:35Down in the rock.
01:10:43So, here's a bright, bright.
01:10:45quiz The weather.
01:10:48Light holding the face.
01:10:49The weather vitamines.
01:11:03coughedwhclock men.
01:11:04Now a maid suffis Ùolonization.
01:11:04And if I think back, and I remember it was a very rough day, very turbulent, sediment
01:11:18everywhere, go down and, whoa, there's another big octopus right next to her.
01:11:34It's very, very rare to see two octopus close together, oh my god, what's going on?
01:11:48And then seeing that both animals are pretty relaxed and realizing, okay, now the mating
01:11:54is beginning.
01:12:07By this stage I knew quite well the stages of an octopus's life.
01:12:12So while I was very excited that this mating was beginning, there was a sort of this dread
01:12:20in the bottom of my stomach.
01:12:31She wasn't coming out of that dead.
01:12:33There was no more feeding, no more hunting.
01:12:38A huge part of her body is actually given to those eggs.
01:12:43So she drops in weight and she loses an enormous amount of strength.
01:12:52The eggs are laid right in the back in the dark.
01:12:56It's impossible to see them.
01:13:04I just keep going every day and just check.
01:13:09She's oxygenating the eggs with her siphon, looking after them.
01:13:14She's just slowly dying and timing her death exactly for the hatching of those eggs.
01:13:26I mean, it struck home so hard for me.
01:13:31Here's an invertebrate, essentially a mollusk, sacrificing her own life for her young.
01:13:52All those eggs hatched.
01:13:55They're tiny and they go into the water column.
01:13:59Hundreds of thousands of them.
01:14:07And the next thing I saw, she's washed out the den, barely alive.
01:14:18And the fish, you know, feeding on her and a lot of the scavengers coming to feed on her.
01:14:26It was just heartbreaking.
01:14:35A part of me just wanted to hold her and chase them away.
01:14:39But I didn't do that.
01:14:54The next day, big chalk came.
01:15:11And just took her away, you know, into the misty forest.
01:15:30Often I go to the place of her main den.
01:15:39And I just float above it and feel her there.
01:15:44Of course I miss her.
01:16:00But, I mean, in some crazy way it was a relief.
01:16:10It was a relief because the intensity of going every day and tracking her and trying to capture it was
01:16:20tough in a way.
01:16:23I mean, I sort of slept, dreamt, this animal.
01:16:29You know, I was in my mind thinking like an octopus.
01:16:34It was also taxing in a way.
01:16:51But underneath that, this incredible pride for this animal that's been through impossible odds to get to this place.
01:17:03An unimaginable life.
01:17:30One of the most exciting things ever in my life.
01:17:34Taking my son, walking along the shore and just showing him the wonders of nature and the details and the
01:17:44intricacies.
01:17:50I was getting so much from the wild and I could actually now give.
01:17:56I had so much energy to give back.
01:18:06He's like a little marine biologist now.
01:18:09He knows so much.
01:18:11He knows so much.
01:18:15He knows so much.
01:18:16I mean, very powerful swimmer.
01:18:21And as he gets older, he seems to want to do it more and more.
01:18:34To see that develop a strong sense of himself.
01:18:45An incredible confidence.
01:18:48But the most important thing, a gentleness.
01:18:53And I think that's the thing that thousands of hours in nature can teach a child.
01:19:07A few months later, after she died, he actually found this tiny little octopus.
01:19:20It's very rare to see an animal that small.
01:19:27They have up to half a million young.
01:19:30A handful survive.
01:19:32So it's a pretty tough road to have to walk.
01:19:36But that's their strategy.
01:19:38Live fast and die young.
01:19:45We kind of imagined that it might be one of her young.
01:19:49It's kind of the right size, the right time.
01:19:56And it was joyous.
01:19:58It was like, well, there she is.
01:20:24She made me realize just how precious wild places are.
01:20:39Now you go into that water and it's extremely liberating.
01:20:47All your worries and problems and life drama just dissolve.
01:21:02You slowly start to care about all the animals.
01:21:06Even the tiniest little animals.
01:21:12You realize that everyone is very important.
01:21:21To sense how vulnerable these wild animals' lives are.
01:21:26And actually then how vulnerable all our lives on this planet are.
01:21:37My relationship with the sea forest and its creatures deepens.
01:21:46You are in touch with this wild place and its speaking to you.
01:21:57Its language is visible.
01:22:13I fell in love with her but also with that amazing wildness that she represented.
01:22:20And how that changed me.
01:22:37What she taught me was to feel that you are part of this place not a visitor.
01:22:44That's a huge difference.
01:22:46That's a huge difference.
01:22:47It's a huge difference.
01:23:13It's a huge difference.
01:23:16Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
01:24:13Oh, oh, oh.
01:24:24Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
01:24:46Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
01:25:16Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
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