Video footage of an octopus riding on the back of a shark has enraptured global audiences because it was released by researchers on the University of Auckland earlier this week.
The Latest Zealand cohort of ocean experts spotted the unlikely duo, a Maori octopus perched atop a shortfin mako shark, within the Hauraki Gulf throughout the summer of 2023.
The researchers were looking out for a feeding frenzy after they spotted the pair casually riding the waves in tandem and playfully coined them “sharktopus.”
In response to a recent blog post by Rochelle Constantine, a professor of biological sciences on the University of Auckland and certainly one of the researchers who discovered the weird sight, the team first spotted a big dorsal fin, signaling a shark of their vicinity. Upon closer inspection, they noticed an “orange patch on its head.”
At first, they assumed it was an injury or that the shark had bumped right into a buoy. To verify their suspicions, the team released a drone and dropped a GoPro camera into the water. That’s after they discovered the pair.
“An octopus perched atop the shark’s head, clinging on with its tentacles,” Constantine wrote.
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“This ‘sharktopus’ was a mysterious find indeed,” she added. “Octopus are totally on the seabed, while shortfin mako sharks don’t favour the deep.”
The octopus opted for a speedy ride, she explained, for the reason that shortfin mako is the fastest shark species, swimming as much as 50 km/h.
Constantine’s area of experience is the Hauraki Gulf — Tīkapa Moana, Te Moananui-ā-Toi — where she studies the behaviour of sharks throughout the summer months.
The gulf is inhabited and visited by many forms of sharks, including bronze whalers, which are sometimes seen by divers and fishers in shallow waters, and, more commonly, smooth hammerheads.
Large open ocean species resembling the dusky shark, the blue shark and the shortfin mako, “otherwise often called the octopus taxi shark,” she joked, are increasingly present within the region.
A blue shark. Photo by Riley Elliott/ University of Auckland.
Photo by Riley Elliott/ University of Auckland
Less is understood about smaller sharks living near the seabed, resembling lemon fish and native carpet sharks, but global shark populations are in steep decline, as a consequence of overfishing, climate change and low reproductive rates.
Constantine says the “sharktopus” encounter is a “reminder of the wonders of the ocean.”
“Among the finest things about being a marine scientist is that you simply never know what you would possibly see next within the sea. By supporting conservation initiatives, we will help to be certain that such extraordinary moments keep happening,” she concluded.
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