World's biggest octopus nursery discovered under Pacific Ocean

Scientists have discovered the world’s biggest octopus nursery on the side of a hill under the surface of the Pacific Ocean. They found it on a hillside 3000 meters below the Pacific Ocean’s surface.

It is an underground sanctuary where 20,000 octopuses give birth. It is an eggplant that unfolds to tend to a nest of eggs that resemble long ping-pong balls. The octopus’s side siphon allows it to release water, which gives their unhatched babies plenty of oxygen.

Planet Earth III: Inside the secret deep-sea oasis where 20,000 octopuses give birth https://t.co/GkLhvrDORr
— BBC Science Focus Magazine (@sciencefocus) December 21, 2023

Biggest Octopus Nursery Found in Octopus Garden

This eggplant contains the world’s biggest octopus nursery is comprised of Muusoctopus robustus, or pearl octopuses. These are seafloor creatures that resemble spherical jewels.

Around 20,000 eight-armed mollusks make up the largest known group on Earth. This event was captured in breathtaking high-resolution for viewers worldwide in the “Oceans” episode of the BBC series Planet Earth III.

The name of this site is Octopus Garden. It lies on a hilltop close to the massive underwater mountain known as Davidson Seamount in the eastern Pacific. It is about 160 kilometers (100 miles) southwest of Monterey Bay.

World's biggest octopus nursery — Pearl octopuses alongside flower-like sea anemones in Octopus Graden | Source: The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

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If a photographer had captured the above view from the shallow waters or a seaweed forest. Then it would have been breathtaking enough. But it couldn’t taken from there as octopus mothers are caring for their eggs nearly three kilometers below the surface.

Producer and director Will Ridgeon said the fact life is there at all is amazing. Will collaborated with scientists and engineers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in California for two years to shoot these octopuses.

Nobody has ever seen so many of these animals in one location before, much less in the deep sea. Octopuses are notably solitary creatures who tend to become cannibalistic when kept together in captivity.