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That is one amazing picture Gavin! I admire your work :-)

Amazing Creatures Octopi are... But SO ugly!

Thanks for your lovely post, Gavin. The sea certainty is home to some amazing creatures.
Where are these wonderful pictures of your new friend holding the banner that we keep hearing about?

What an amazing experience ..and all filmed!

Great story. Love that clever octopus!!

Long Live the Octopus!

Fabulous story Gavin... do you think he wants a job? I can imagine the look on a politician's face if this guy hung a banner off some parliament building ... just gotta work out how to get him into an orange jumpsuit ...

Great one Gavin, wish I was there getting wet, close and personal with these buddies...

Good luck out there, go get them!

Outstanding. The Cephalapod Fan list has been alerted.

But I'm afraid I have my blue pencil here and have raised it into the air in a didactic gesture and must quote the following from the Oxford English Dictionary:

Although it is often supposed that octopi is the 'correct' plural of octopus, and it has been in use for longer than the usual Anglicized plural octopuses, it in fact originates as an error. Octopus is not a simple Latin word of the second declension, but a Latinized form of the Greek word oktopous, and its 'correct' plural would logically be octopodes.

Other words ending in -us show a very varied pattern. Like octopi, the plural hippopotami is now generally taken to be either funny or absurdly pedantic, and the usual plural is hippopotamuses. Common usage appears to indicate a slight preference for termini rather than terminuses, but syllabuses rather than syllabi. Other usual forms include cacti and gladioli, and our files at the dictionary department show scarcely any examples of nucleuses or funguses. (Omnibi is simply a joke, and quite ungrammatical in Latin!)

I'll leave you to chuckle over that truly excellent joke but while I've got this pencil out, will you pass on a message to Elaine: it's SHIP'S WEBLOG, with an apostrophum.

;-)

--b

THOUGHT YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN THIS, TAKEN FROM ENS NEWSWIRE:

Brazil Leads Another Bid for a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary
FRIGATE BAY, St. Kitts and Nevis, May 31, 2006 (ENS) - Scientific consultations have begun in advance of this year's International Whaling Commission meeting and so has the political maneuvering both for and against whale conservation.
A broad alliance of Brazilian institutions, including the federal government, private and state owned corporations and nongovernmental organizations is resuming a drive to consolidate the South Atlantic Ocean as a zone free of whaling through the promotion of a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary.
Each year since 1998, Brazil has proposed a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary that would extend from the east coast of South America to the west coast of Africa.
The decision to continue pursuing the Sanctuary within the International Whaling Commission, despite opposition by the growing pro-whaling block, was announced Monday by the Brazilian Alternate Commissioner José Truda Palazzo, Jr., at the IWC Scientific Committee annual meeting.
The meeting is taking place at the St. Kitts Marriott Resort & the Royal Beach Casino at Frigate Bay in the Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis. The small island country is hosting the Commission's pre-meetings and its annual plenary from June 16 to 20, when the Sanctuary will again come to a vote.
Like many other small island states, St. Kitts and Nevis supports whaling in exchange for Japanese fisheries aid.

Can you turn the Octopus with something to say into a wallpaper? Please?