FEATURE | OCTOPUS GARDEN
Find out more about the Octopus Garden by watching Planet Earth III
Amauve arm, covered in suckers, gently unfurls and tends to a clutch of eggs shaped like elongated ping pong balls. Puffs of water from the siphon on the side of the octopus's head ensure her unhatched young get plenty of oxygen. She's surrounded by hundreds of other females which, when viewed from a distance, live up to their nickname. Pearl octopuses (Muusoctopus robustus) resemble spherical gems sitting on the seabed.
This is the largest known aggregation of eight-armed molluscs on the planet – around 20,000 – and it's being witnessed by people all around the world in stunning high definition in the 'Oceans' episode of the BBC series Planet Earth III.
This view would have been astonishing enough had it come from somewhere in the shallow seas, a tropical coral reef or a kelp forest, but these octopus mothers are tending their eggs almost 3km (2 miles) below the surface, in the freezing cold and darkness of the deep sea.
