Spotted Octopus, Okinawa Japan

kidstonphotography Night diving can be some of the best diving you will ever do.  I would have two bright lights always on, to open up the darkness of the water.  It gave me a little security in seeing a little of ahead of me so nothing really surprised me.  I would have another hand held light just in case, on standby.  With my main lights, I would have red caps, I would put on when I wanted to get close and take pictures.  The area I was diving this night was an inlet from the deep ocean.  What made this dive site special, is you never knew what was coming in from the deep at night.  The dive would start about 30 minutes after the sun set.  You didn’t want to get in too soon because nothing was out yet.  Almost everything that was going to be out was swimming or hunting for food within the first hour of the dive.  Normally night dives were so shallow you could be in the water close to 120 minutes.  My dive buddy and me really didn’t start getting into the zone of photography until about an hour into the dive and then it felt like all the ocean life was out.  I was on way back from a dive and this Spotted Octopus was sitting in the sand.  The octopus was about three feet long and was very curious.  I think it had a hard time making out what I was doing there.   His skin would get dramatically dark and then flash red.  I have never seen this octopus during the day.  This was the first and last time I saw it in this location.