An octopus scoots along the reef during one of Anne Rillero’s Sunday swims off the Makena coast. A friend, Don Bloom, dove down to snap a photo. DON BLOOM photo
At the Maui Ocean Center, head aquarist Nadine Nagata has a front-row seat to the fascinating mind of an octopus.
Considered one of the most intelligent invertebrates, the octopus’ major strengths include memory and problem-solving skills, Nagata said. Although difficult to measure, its intelligence could be comparable to those of some birds and mammals.
“We see this at the Maui Ocean Center since we give our octopus stimulation in ‘play’ form to keep it engaged,” she said. “(Like) a bottle with food in it, Mr. Potato head, Rubik’s cube.”
The octopus explores and navigates its surroundings by touching and tasting with its tentacles, a unique and complex feature that can help it identify prey and predators out in the ocean. To complement its unique sensory system, the octopus also has the ability to camouflage, release ink and fit into small spaces to protect itself in the wild.
“I think of an animal being smart if it has evolved successful strategies for survival,” said Peter Kilian, a research assistant and aquatic animal technician at the Bellono Lab at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University. “On a very basic level, that is intelligence. Can the animal survive evolutionary pressures? If it can, then it’s genius and it has everything that it needs to survive.”
Kilian was the guest speaker at a Maui Nui Marine Resource Council Zoom webinar titled “Exploring the Octopus: How to Learn from Animal Behavior” last month, where he highlighted the octopus’ ability to thrive in its complex surroundings.
“These environments that these animals live in are incredibly complex when it comes to things like vision, sense, touch and smells,” Kilian said. “There’s all kinds of smells in the ocean and all kinds of things that you need to track with your eyes and pay attention to in order to survive.”
The Bellono Lab studies how diverse organisms sense, interpret and respond to changes in their environment. Kilian handles fish, sharks, cephalopods and other marine animals to learn how and why they behave in certain ways.
Octopuses have a central brain, like humans, but “do a lot more processing” and some of their “thinking” in their eight arms, he said. When given several different stimuli at the lab, such as dripping fish juice into a tank, chemotactile receptors on the octopus’ suckercups were activated for smell and taste, while mechanosensory cells are activated for touch when necessary.
And, octopuses heavily rely on this system to adapt and survive if one or more of their senses are disabled, he said.
“This is definitely a unique feature that they possess compared to other marine animals,” Nagata said Monday. “Imagine being able to not only feel and move with eight independent arms but add two more sensory features to it.”
Throughout her 17 years at the ocean center, Nagata said her experience with these complex creatures has always been “a wonderful one.”
“Being able to work with them face to face is not something a lot of people do and yet it is my every day,” Nagata said. “I do enjoy working with the different individuals that we encounter and not all octopus are the same.
“Some have more playful behaviors than others. Some take a while to warm up to our staff, others form an immediate bond.”
The most common species of octopus in Hawaii and around Maui is the day octopus, or Octopus cyanea. There is one housed at the ocean center.
Nagata noted that there are five other species that are listed in scientific literature that live in shallow waters but “unless you have the tako eye, they would be easily missed.”
A total of 15 octopus species are known to inhabit Hawaii’s shallow waters. The octopus’ diet mostly includes crabs, with the occasional mollusks and some fish, she said.
There are 75 cephalopod (octopus and squid) species recorded in Hawaii waters, but most live offshore or at great depths.
While intelligent in nature, octopuses like all creatures have weaknesses, Nagata added. This includes their short, one-year life span and small body size, and of course, the fact that they also “taste good.”
In addition to humans, different fish species, eels and sharks tend to enjoy eating octopuses.
“Octopus are definitely a staple here on Maui and the entire island chain,” she said. “They are, however, a regulated species in which you are not allowed to collect them if they are under 1 pound.
While it may seem like more people have been fishing during the COVID-19 pandemic, Nagata believes that “some of the biggest advocates to sustainable fishing practices are those who are born and raised here.”
“So during this pandemic, I believe even with the larger opportunity in harvesting this species, people only take what they need,” she said.
* Dakota Grossman can be reached at dgrossman@mauinews.com.
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