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All Arms

November 21, 2006

“Most octopuses will let you get close, maybe even touch them, but normally they’ll try to run once the manipulator gets close,” said Alvin pilot Bruce Strickrott, of his encounter with a deep-sea octopus 2,300 meters down (about 7,500 feet) in the Gulf of Mexico. This female was docile and, instead of swimming away, grabbed the submersible’s robotic manipulator arm, used for picking up samples of seafloor rocks and organisms. (Photo by Bruce Strickrott, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)