Depending on the day and your place in the food chain, nature is either magical or indiscriminately cruel. Every second of the day, creatures large and small duke it out for dominance and survival but most of the time humans aren’t privy to these battles (unless you are the omnipotent David Attenborough, that is). But sometimes serendipity occurs, and two titans locked in battle are caught on film.
Such was the case on February 10, 2017 when a SCUBA diver and underwater photographer decided to take advantage of the unusually exceptional levels of visibility to record the local wildlife off the coast of Monterey, California. What he found was a red octopus and a swimmer crab having a violent debate over whether or not the crab would acquiesce to become a snack for the octopus. Suddenly, things took an unexpected karmic turn for the octopus.
DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS POINT UNTIL YOU WATCH THE VIDEO.
According to the unnamed photographer who submitted the footage to ViralHog, he had initially been recording the harbor seal, whom he had affectionately named Whiskers. The seal recognized the divers from their many nocturnal underwater journeys and had long since begun to use the photography lights to help hunt for fish, because Whiskers isn’t stupid. From the photographer’s description:
“While diving, we were surprised by our friend, “Whiskers”, the harbor seal, who often shows up when we dive at night. Whiskers has learned to use our dive lights to help hunt fish, and having Whiskers show up is not an uncommon occurrence. After a while, Whiskers was gone and my eye caught some action going on to the left, and I realized that a red octopus was chasing a swimmer crab around the sand. I immediately split off to go investigate and film, and Patrick followed. It was a great battle until Whiskers showed back up”
By filming the fight, the humans basically shined a giant spotlight on an “all can eat octopus seafood buffet” and Whiskers took advantage. Now we just need a Pixar movie about Whiskers befriending the swimmer crab to make this adventure complete.