<\/a>This is a giant Pacific octopus sculpture by Nicole Taylor giant at Nicci Knacks studio in Wrangell. (Courtesy Photo | Nicole Taylor)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
Grandfather stays pressed against the pilothouse, watching. The octopus reaches out, spreading one arm to the starboard side; another arm reaches to the port side: a 12-foot beam. The creature touches the water on both sides, feeling its lifeline then pulls its eight arms together, stiffening them, then pushes off, heaving its body overboard. And with hardly a splash, the octopus descends beneath the surface of the green water.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Grandfather told this story to his wide-eyed son, my father, and my father told it to me.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The creature my grandfather hooked on his trolling gear was a giant Pacific octopus, the Enteroctopus dofleini, the largest octopus in the world. The giant Pacific octopus can grow up to 30-feet long and on average weigh one hundred pounds up to a couple hundred pounds. Not surprisingly the Tlingits called the large octopus a devilfish, and in the Lingít language is náakw (knockw). Giant octopuses occupy my worldview, they’re a part of my heritage. In my Finnish culture, in the Kalevala epic, there’s a creature referred to as Iku-Turso, a giant octopus or a combination of walrus and octopus. And then there’s the Kraken which is sometimes depicted as an octopus or giant squid.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
My children’s people, the Tlingit, and my ancestors, the Sámi and Suomalaiset, have relied on the ocean’s bounty for thousands of years, so it’s no wonder many of our stories dwell in the sea. We think of the octopus as strictly being an ocean dweller but what if they do come ashore occasionally? My daughter, Vivian Mork Yéilk’, says her paternal Grandpa Elmer (Mork), has been telling her all of her life that octopuses walk on land. He said no one believed him. He told her a story about a time when he and his brother, Ray, were young and out exploring the beach near Hoonah’s cannery when they saw an octopus walk up the beach to the treeline and eat blueberries. They caught the octopus and killed it so they could eat it. When they told the story to their mother, Eliza Mork, she was mad at them. She said, “It was a special octopus and when you see animals doing human things, you leave them alone.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
When I think of this admonition I’m certain there’s more to this creature than we understand.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
First close encounter and vivid dreams<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t My first encounter with an octopus occurred when I was around 4 years old. As children, my sister and I would go shrimping with my maternal grandfather, and on one occasion, the trawl pulled up a small octopus along with thousands of wiggling shrimp. My grandfather put it in a five-gallon bucket. We touched it and giggled, but the creature needed to return so we let it go. I still recall how my fingertips touched the octopus’s tentacles and how I sensed it was also touching me.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t An octopus has an extremely sensitive touch; the rim of the suckers being the most sensitive. It’s likely my grandfather’s intimate encounter with a giant octopus was as terrifyingly wonderful for the octopus. A new study about how octopuses process information reveals they have similar intelligence to ravens and primates, but their neurons are in their arms and suckers in addition to the brain. They “feel” the world in order to know it, which is what the octopus was doing — learning about the fisherman who’d just accidentally plopped it on the back deck of his troller.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t