A Vancouver Island resident had the encounter of a lifetime recently when fishing with some friends in the Alberni Inlet.
Port Alberni resident Brooke Sattar told Global News that last week they were out setting some prawn traps when one catch unveiled a big surprise.
“We pulled up a big octopus,” she said.
Sattar quickly pulled out her phone to record, barely believing what she was seeing – a huge red-coloured octopus wrapped around the entire trap.
“It held on for two or three minutes, it wasn’t long at all and then it just let go and swam away,” she said.
However, she said the encounter felt much longer.
“It did not feel like three minutes but then I looked at my video and thought ‘oh that was only a 20-second video’,” Sattar laughed.
She said when they first started pulling the trap up it was very heavy so they thought it was a full prawn trap. The colour of the octopus also threw them off, not realizing they were looking at a mollusc wrapped around the trap.
According to the Nature Conservancy of Canada, the northern giant Pacific octopus is the “largest, longest-lived octopus species.”
The organization says the cephalopod mollusc is considered to be very smart and some have been known to open jars and complete mazes.
Sattar posted the video to her TikTok account and it has received about 30 million views so far.
“I think it’s pretty awesome that I was able to share this experience with so many people around the world because you don’t see it every day,” she said.
“I love ocean life so I was very excited and surprised.”
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