Rusty brown under white star-spots, out only at night and rarely still for long.
The mantle reaches about 13 cm and the arms are long and slender, giving an animal that spans some 80 cm with almost none of that being body. The ground colour is reddish brown to rust, carrying rounded white spots scattered over the mantle and out along the arms, and the spots stand out more strongly when the animal is disturbed. Against Callistoctopus ornatus, which is the closest thing in the region: there the white marks are arranged as bars and dashes in lines down the arms rather than as scattered spots. Against Octopus cyanea, which is bulkier, day-active and carries a false eyespot at the base of the arms. The wider difficulty is that muck sites produce a good many red-brown octopuses at night and photographs of them are labelled luteus on colour alone, so the species is better recorded than it is confirmed.
Sand, rubble, weed beds and reef edge from about 2 to 25 m, and strictly nocturnal — a day dive over the same ground gives nothing. It moves fast for an octopus, covering open sediment in short runs rather than flowing over it, which is the usual reason an encounter ends early. Foraging is done by parachuting the web over a patch of rubble and feeling underneath. Encounters are uncommon everywhere it occurs and the species is poorly known; the published record amounts to little more than a range and a description.
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.
