Deep red with a broken line of white spots down each arm, hunting in the open at night.
A long-armed octopus with a mantle to about 12 cm and arms several times that, coloured a deep brick red to maroon and marked with a row of round white spots running the length of each arm and a scatter of them over the mantle. Under a torch beam the spots are the first thing seen and they identify the animal immediately; nothing else on a Lembeh night dive is red with white beads.
Strictly nocturnal and, unlike the octopus that hunt from a den, it works across open ground, moving continuously and throwing the web between the arms over rubble to trap whatever is underneath — the “parachute” hunting that most of the long-armed species use. It rarely stops for long, which is the practical problem: the photograph is taken by getting ahead of the animal and waiting rather than following it. Recorded from the shallows to about 25 m. A light held steadily on one will make it change colour and move away, so the working method is to light it obliquely and let it come past.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.
