Footage Reveals Newly Discovered Blue Octopus No Bigger Than a Golf Ball

The new species of octopus, 5,800 feet deep in the ocean near Isla Darwin | Image credit: Charles Darwin Foundation.

Scientists captured footage of a tiny new species of blue octopus, about the size of a golf ball, at a depth of 5,800 feet in the ocean.

According to a research paper published on Monday, a team from the Charles Darwin Foundation discovered the new species of bright blue octopus in the waters of the Galápagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador. Blue is believed to be the rarest color found in nature.

While the discovery was only recently announced, the palm-sized octopus was first spotted in 2015 by researchers aboard the submersible Nautilus in 5,800-foot-deep waters. The vessel’s crew had deployed a remotely operated robot to explore the seafloor near Darwin Island at the northern edge of the Galápagos archipelago.

The submersible’s remotely operated camera was scanning the ocean floor when it picked up a flash of blue and zoomed in to reveal a small eight-armed creature alone near an underwater mountain. About the size of a golf ball, the tiny creature surprised researchers during the deep-sea expedition when it appeared on camera, crawling across the ocean floor near the underwater mountain.

Audio from the ROV footage captures the scientists’ first reactions to the animal. The researchers can be heard exclaiming, “He’s tiny!” and “It’s blue!” Another scientist describes the “cute” octopus as looking “like one of those plushies.”

Using the ROV, the crew was able to collect the octopus. Over the course of the mission, they also captured video footage of two other individuals that appeared to be the same species. When the scientists returned from the expedition, they brought the dozens of deep-sea specimens they had collected to the Charles Darwin Research Station. There, researchers sorted through the material, and the tiny blue octopus stood out. Unsure of what species it belonged to, they contacted octopus expert Janet Voight and sent her a photo of the animal.

“Right away, I knew it was something really special,” Voight, curator emerita of invertebrates at the Field Museum in Chicago and the lead author of the stud, says in a statement. “I’d never seen anything like it.”

The new species, named Microeledone galapagensis, stands out for reasons beyond its extraordinarily rare bright blue color. The octopus also appears to be the smallest member of the Megaleledonidae family, whose species are typically much larger and live in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica.

“These are little octopuses that live in the deep sea, and hardly anybody on Earth has ever gotten to see them. I just feel lucky that I got to work with them,” Voight explains. “If you took all the land on Earth and pieced it together, you would not cover the Pacific Ocean. The oceans are so big, and there’s so much left to explore.”

Image credits: Header photo by Charles Darwin Foundation.