Loyal octopus mom breaks record, stays with her eggs for 4 [1/2] years

A steadfast little octopus living in the deep waters of Monterey Bay has set an extraordinary record of animal motherhood, laying her clutch of eggs and brooding them nonstop for 53 straight months — apparently without pause for food or rest.

No creature in the world, large or small, has ever approached such a feat, say biologists who watched over the octopus with cameras in an unmanned submarine from Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

The deep-water octopus was a small one, with a mantle barely 8 inches from stem to stern. But she made up in staying power what she lacked in size, said Bruce Robison, the institute biologist who observed the mother in the Monterey Submarine Canyon.

Robison has been studying the ecology of the canyon's mid-level waters for 25 years. He was in the midst of such work seven years ago when he spotted a female octopus moving slowly across the ocean floor toward a rocky outcrop 4,600 feet beneath the surface where he'd noticed other females brooding their eggs.

He was aboard a research vessel towing an unmanned submarine known as a remotely operated vehicle, which is equipped with specialized observation cameras and sensors.

A distinct pattern of scars on this female's mantle identified the octopus, and a month later when Robison returned he spotted her again, this time guarding a clutch of newly laid eggs attached to the same rock.

"This was a chance to watch the whole brooding process," he said. "It was a fluke. No one before ever had a chance to see anything like it, so it was kind of bootleg science, but we decided to watch her again and again."

Octopus eggs develop extraordinarily slowly in cold water — it was 37 degrees where the eggs were laid — and this mother was on duty every time the scientists checked in.

"During that whole time we never saw her leave the eggs once," Robison said. "We never saw her eat anything, and she paid no attention to the crabs and shrimp swimming by, except when she pushed them away with her arms because they were predators."

The octopus even ignored proffered chunks of crab dangled from the unmanned sub, he said.

An octopus mother's mantle in this species is normally a pale purple, Robison said, but as the months went by this mother's skin sagged and turned white. Her mantle shrank and her eyes grew cloudy. "She just looked really old," he said.