Giant Pacific octopus

How it lives

The giant Pacific octopus lives about 3 to 5 years, long for an octopus. It is solitary and lives in dens in caves, rock crevices or under boulders, from the intertidal zone down to about 1,500 m, with a home range of under 5 square km. Each animal breeds once. The male dies within weeks of mating. The female lays thousands of eggs, with counts that differ widely between sources, guards them for about six months without eating, and dies after they hatch. The larvae drift as plankton before settling on the seabed.

Where it goes

No long migration is described in the sources read. Adults keep to a den and a home range of under 5 square km, and larvae drift with the plankton. One source says adults mate in deeper water, beyond about 50 m (164 ft). The range runs from Baja California to Alaska and across to Japan and Korea.

We only draw a journey on the map when scientists have tracked it or clearly documented it. For this animal we have not found one yet.

Populations

Listed as Least Concern by the IUCN (assessed 2014). Alaska notes that the population size across the North Pacific is unknown and that the species is not listed as threatened, though commercial interest and catch have risen, and about 35,000 lb a year is taken as bycatch in Lower Cook Inlet cod fisheries. It has no special status under the IUCN, CITES or US federal law. No population figure for British Columbia was found in the sources read.