Rare blanket octopus sighted in South Island

When Shawn Purser entered the South Island 2022 spearfishing competition in the Queen Charlotte Sound early this year he didn’t expect to come across an extremely rare blanket octopus.

Purser has been a spearfisher for close to 15 years and entered the competition with his mate Don MacDonald with the intention of catching a range of species of fish within the allotted five hours. But when the two saw the amazing creature they put the competition on the backburner.
The octopus that Purser and MacDonald saw was a female between one and two metres long. Males only grow to a few centimetres in length, the size of a walnut.

"As we were going along we came across this big blanket octopus," Purser said. Just the week before he had seen a story of a similar sighting in Australia by marine biologist Jacinta Shackleton which had gone viral. She had noted they are very rarely encountered in the wild.

With the spearfishing competition clock ticking, Purser and MacDonald continued to admire the octopus.

"We probably swam with it for 10-15 minutes - it would go into all these different shapes with its tail, and then blanket out right across. It was just an amazing creature," Purser told Newshub. "We were both just sitting there mind struck over this thing, it was incredible."

Once the competition was over, Purser shared the video with other competitors at the prizegiving.
"I've had a lot of reaction from a lot of divers and they are just mind blown to have seen something like this, especially in the South Island."
He said to come across a species like the blanket octopus was a "once in a lifetime" experience.
"The highlight of this whole competition was seeing that thing."