My Octopus Teacher

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Transcript

00:00:00You're stepping into this completely different world, such an incredible feeling, and you

00:00:19feel you're on the brink of something extraordinary, but you realize that there's a line that can't

00:00:32be crossed.

00:00:33It's quite a long time ago now, that day when it all started.

00:01:29This place on the tip of Africa is known as the Cape of Storms.

00:01:43My childhood memories were completely dominated by the rocky shore, the intertidal, and the

00:01:48kiln forest.

00:01:55We had this little wooden bungalow, literally below the high water mark, so when those huge

00:02:02storms used to come in, the ocean used to smash the doors down and fill up the bottom

00:02:07of the house.

00:02:13So it was incredibly exciting as a child to literally live in the force of that giant

00:02:18Atlantic Ocean.

00:02:29Most of my childhood was spent in the rock pools, diving in the shallow kelp forest.

00:02:39That's what I most loved to do.

00:02:44As an adult, I'd been separated from that.

00:02:49And that was fine at first, until I went to the central Kalahari, about 20 years ago.

00:03:08I was making a film called The Great Dance with my brother, and then I met these men

00:03:14who were probably some of the best trackers in the world.

00:03:21To watch these men go into these incredible subtle signs in nature, things that my eye

00:03:29couldn't even see, and then follow them, sometimes for hours, and find hidden animals on the

00:03:35landscape was just extraordinary to witness.

00:03:40I mean, they just were inside of the natural world, and I could feel I was outside.

00:03:53And I had this deep longing to be inside that world.

00:04:07I went through two years of absolute hell.

00:04:14I'd been working hard for a long time, and I'd just worn myself out.

00:04:21I hadn't slept properly for months.

00:04:25My family was suffering, and I was getting sick from all the pressure.

00:04:36My mind couldn't deal with all that stuff, and I didn't want to see a camera on edit

00:04:43suite ever again.

00:04:45I couldn't even face that.

00:04:51Your great purpose in life is now just in pieces, and you've got this young child that's

00:05:03growing up, Tom.

00:05:09I just couldn't, in that state, be a good father to my son.

00:05:19I had to have a radical change.

00:05:24And I took inspiration from my childhood, and I took inspiration from these master trackers

00:05:29that I'd work with in the Kalahari.

00:05:34And the only way I knew to do it was to be in this ocean.

00:05:44In the beginning, it's a hard thing to get in the water.

00:05:49It's one of the wildest, most scary places to swim on the planet.

00:06:04The water drops to as low as eight, nine degrees Celsius.

00:06:11The cold takes your breath away.

00:06:17And you just have to relax.

00:06:24And then you'll get this beautiful window of time of 10, 15 minutes.

00:06:30Suddenly, everything feels okay.

00:06:37The cold upgrades the brain, because you're getting this flood of chemicals every time

00:06:48you immerse in that cold water.

00:06:53Your whole body comes alive.

00:06:59And then, as your body adapts, it just becomes easier and easier.

00:07:10And eventually, after about a year, you start to crave the cold.

00:07:29What's so amazing about this environment is you're in a three-dimensional forest,

00:07:39and you can jump off the top and go wherever you want.

00:07:43You're flying, basically.

00:07:49You might as well be on another planet.

00:07:57You naturally just get more relaxed in the water.

00:08:04You get to be able to hold your breath for longer.

00:08:11Having a scuba tank in a thick kelp forest is not optimal for me.

00:08:22I want to be more like an amphibious animal.

00:08:34Instinctively, I knew not to wear a wetsuit.

00:08:41If you really want to get close to an environment like this,

00:08:46it helps tremendously to have no barrier to that environment.

00:08:59And I suddenly realized I've got energy to take images and film again,

00:09:05and then picked up my camera again and started doing the thing I love and what I know.

00:09:16Animals are extremely exotic and strange.

00:09:35It's like much more extreme than our maddest science fiction.

00:09:46I remember that day when it all started.

00:09:52I found this very, very special area that is protected with a big piece of kelp forest,

00:10:00and I thought to myself,

00:10:04And I remember that day when it all started.

00:10:10I found this very, very special area that is protected with a big piece of kelp forest,

00:10:17because the forest itself actually dampens the swell.

00:10:24And the whole forest around there is absolutely murky and you can't see a thing.

00:10:30And in this little 200-meter patch, you can dive and observe.

00:10:36And it's an incredible place.

00:10:41And I remember there was this strange shape to my left,

00:10:46and just going down and seeing this really strange thing.

00:10:52And I remember there was this strange shape to my left,

00:10:57and just going down and seeing this really strange thing.

00:11:03The fish even seem to be confused.

00:11:09The fish even seem to be confused.

00:11:15The fish even seem to be confused.

00:11:21The fish even seem to be confused.

00:11:33And then suddenly...

00:11:44At the time, I didn't know I'd witnessed something extraordinary.

00:11:50It came in at the end of a whole drama.

00:11:58You think, what on earth is this animal doing?

00:12:04And I think she was a little bit afraid of me,

00:12:06so she lifted this incredibly slippery piece of algae,

00:12:11that you can hardly hold with your hands,

00:12:13and just wrapped it in this extraordinary cloak around her,

00:12:16and scared me out of the little gap.

00:12:27And then, boom, you know, she was gone.

00:12:47It's a hard thing to explain, but sometimes you just get a feeling,

00:12:52It's a hard thing to explain, but sometimes you just get a feeling,

00:12:58and you know there's something to this creature that's very unusual.

00:13:07There's something to learn here.

00:13:13There's something special about her.

00:13:26And then I had this crazy idea, what happens if I just went every day?

00:13:31What happens if I never missed a day?

00:13:43And initially, she was clearly being affected by my presence.

00:13:47So I thought, oh, I'll just leave the camera there,

00:13:49and then that'll record her going about her business.

00:13:57She sees this shiny new thing in the forest.

00:14:06Coming at it with a shield,

00:14:09just in case it attacked and put up the shield.

00:14:17This is now something different, this is interesting.

00:14:22Touching it, feeling it, tasting it.

00:14:30Sometimes if you're in a playful mood,

00:14:32you couldn't leave it there for too long,

00:14:34if you just pull the thing over.

00:14:40It took going in every day to really get to know her environment better.

00:14:50Initially, it all just seems like much of the same thing.

00:14:56But then after a while, you see all the different types of the forest.

00:15:02You get the old-growth forest.

00:15:06You get the forest with a lot of different algae growing in the bottom.

00:15:12You get the misty forest.

00:15:17As I started to map the environment around her den,

00:15:22it was shocking to see small caves really close to her,

00:15:26packed with pajama sharks.

00:15:30And they really are a big part of her life.

00:15:34And I think it's really interesting to see

00:15:37how the environment around her changes.

00:15:41She's packed with pajama sharks.

00:15:45And they really are her most serious predator.

00:15:50Their skin is striped, that's what they call a pajama shark.

00:15:56They're not visual predators,

00:16:00but they have an incredible sense of smell.

00:16:07And they are particularly aggressive.

00:16:19They can shove their noses into a small crack.

00:16:25So they are deadly little octopus predators.

00:16:30And I was thinking, well, how long before something happens with these animals?

00:16:50After visiting her more and more and more,

00:16:54there was a definite moment

00:16:59that fear subsided tremendously.

00:17:07She'd see a big movement and she'd be slightly afraid.

00:17:10And then, look, oh, it's him.

00:17:13And she'd come out and be very curious.

00:17:20Very interested, very curious, but not taking stupid chances.

00:17:26Keeping all the other arms attached to the den and the suckers in place.

00:17:43And then it just happens.

00:17:46I'd put my hand out a tiny bit.

00:17:57And then I'd put my hand out a tiny bit.

00:18:01And then I'd put my hand out a tiny bit.

00:18:21Something happens when that animal makes contact.

00:18:32But at some point you're going to have to breathe.

00:18:38So you've got to very gently prise off those suckers without disturbing her

00:18:46so that you can actually go up and take a breath.

00:19:02By far the most powerful is when it comes out the den.

00:19:08Because that's when you know there's full trust.

00:19:11There's no holding the arms back just in case I have to pull back.

00:19:15It's like, I totally trust this human and I'm coming out of the den

00:19:21and I'm going to go about my business.

00:19:26I started to see pretty extraordinary things.

00:19:31They can look spiky, they can look smooth.

00:19:37Grow horns, they can grow a beard.

00:19:41They can grow a beard.

00:19:44They can grow a beard.

00:19:47They can grow a beard.

00:19:50They can grow a beard.

00:19:54Grow horns on their heads.

00:20:01They can match colour, texture, pattern, skin.

00:20:05It's beautiful.

00:20:09Most of the time she's jetting or crawling or swimming.

00:20:16But occasionally two legs come out.

00:20:24She walks.

00:20:30She walks.

00:20:34She walks.

00:20:38And off she goes striding away, walking bipedally.

00:20:46She puts her body into this strange posture that kind of looks like a rock.

00:20:54And then two of those arms underneath slowly moving

00:20:59so the rock is just slowly moving away.

00:21:07And then she changes into this extraordinary wobbly, flowy old lady in a dress.

00:21:16Perhaps she's trying to mimic kelp or algae moving in the swell

00:21:23and at the same time slowly moving away.

00:21:28And this is how she works, this incredible creativity to deceive.

00:21:37An octopus is essentially a snail that's lost its shell in evolution.

00:21:42A very fragile, liquid, soft animal that relies on tremendous intelligence.

00:21:50She's got no mother or father to teach her anything, she's alone.

00:21:55She's got all these different type of predators all hunting her.

00:22:02So over millions of years she's had to come up with the most incredible methods to deceive them.

00:22:14And she's got to learn fast because she's only got just over a year to live.

00:22:25When you're diving alone, everything about my kit has to be perfect.

00:22:33And I've got to be prepared for all eventualities.

00:22:36I can't be fiddling around, it's got to be totally instinctive.

00:22:45But she's got to be able to do it.

00:22:51But at that point I was making a lot of mistakes.

00:22:59One day she was following me and that's the most incredible thing,

00:23:03is to be followed by an octopus.

00:23:05You know, you're just backing away, moving backwards

00:23:08and this incredible animal is coming towards you

00:23:11and there's not a lot of fear in it at all.

00:23:13It's curious and there's this trust and it's like this fantastic feeling.

00:23:21And then it dropped one of my lenses.

00:23:25And that thing falling quickly just startles that animal.

00:23:29And then it turns and rushes and it's got a huge fight.

00:23:40And you just, you want to kick yourself.

00:23:45Because that could have ended in the most incredible interaction

00:23:48and deep trust and you've ruined it.

00:23:51Now, have you ruined it forever?

00:23:54Is that animal ever going to trust you?

00:23:57Has that experience freaked it out too much?

00:24:03And then I approached her too fast.

00:24:06And that's when she left.

00:24:08And then I approached her again.

00:24:11And I approached her too fast.

00:24:14And that's when she left the den and got a real fright.

00:24:20And didn't come back to that den.

00:24:25And I thought this was over.

00:24:28She was gone.

00:24:42I'd had this experience with these incredible sawn master trackers.

00:24:48I just thought, I wonder if anybody could ever track anything underwater.

00:24:58This animal has spent millions of years

00:25:02learning to be impossible to find.

00:25:12I had to learn what octopus tracks looked like.

00:25:17And that was very frustrating at first.

00:25:20So difficult to discern.

00:25:22What's the difference between octopus tracks and heart urchin tracks?

00:25:26And fish tracks?

00:25:29And worm tracks?

00:25:32And the predation marks?

00:25:36The egg casings?

00:25:39So many things.

00:25:43I needed to learn everything.

00:25:57And then you have to start thinking like an octopus.

00:26:02It's like being a detective.

00:26:05And you just slowly get all your clues together.

00:26:32And then I started to make breakthroughs.

00:26:42Okay, those are the animals she's killing.

00:26:52And then I started to make breakthroughs.

00:27:02So I'm looking at kills.

00:27:05I'm looking at little marks, diggings in the sand.

00:27:08Little changes in the algal patterns where she's been moving.

00:27:12And then knowing, okay, this animal is very close now.

00:27:16It's close. It's within one or two meters.

00:27:19And then focusing on that small space.

00:27:27And then bang.

00:27:30She's there.

00:27:38Finally, after looking for her for a week, day after day,

00:27:43there she was.

00:27:50It's like a human friend waving and saying,

00:27:54Hi, I'm excited to see you.

00:28:01And I could feel it from one minute to the next.

00:28:05Okay, I trust you. I trust you, human.

00:28:09And now you can come into my octopus world.

00:28:21And she's moving towards me.

00:28:24And my natural instinct is to gently back away.

00:28:31And then I just wanted to keep still, so I held onto a rock.

00:28:41She just kept coming and then covered my whole hand.

00:28:46And I'd been underwater for quite a long time.

00:28:49So I just gently pushed for the surface,

00:28:52thinking she would move off my hand.

00:28:55But she didn't.

00:28:57But she didn't. She just rode on my hand right to the surface.

00:29:18There I was, just staring into the eyes of this incredible creature.

00:29:27Look at that.

00:29:49It was very difficult to imagine at first

00:29:51that she was getting anything out of the relationship.

00:29:54Could a wild animal doing its thing get anything out of this strange human creature visiting?

00:30:05And this is where it gets interesting.

00:30:12I think quite stimulating for that huge intelligence.

00:30:24Somehow she realizes this thing is not dangerous, so you go and you interact with this human.

00:30:34And perhaps it does give you some strange octopus level of joy.

00:31:04When you have that connection with that animal and have those experiences, it's absolutely mind-blowing.

00:31:22There's no greater feeling on earth.

00:31:33The distance between her and I seem to dissolve.

00:31:39Just the pure magnificence of her.

00:32:03All I could do at the time was just think of her in the water and on land.

00:32:23I mean, it just became a bit of an obsession.

00:32:26You want to visit her every single day and see what's going on.

00:32:29You can't wait to get back in the water.

00:32:48What goes through her mind? What's she thinking?

00:32:52Does she dream? If she dreams, what does she dream about?

00:33:08It just ignited my curiosity in a way that I had not experienced before.

00:33:23It's very useful to come back home and try and read as many scientific papers as possible.

00:33:31She's a common octopus. Octopus vulgaris is the scientific name.

00:33:38Two-thirds of her cognition is actually outside of her brain, in her arms.

00:33:46Her entire being is thinking, feeling, exploring.

00:33:52She's got 2,000 suckers and she's using all of them independently.

00:33:57How do you do that? Imagine having 2,000 fingers.

00:34:03You can compare her intelligence to a cat or a dog or even to one of the lower primates.

00:34:10A mollusk shouldn't be this intelligent.

00:34:16So many times I'd go and search through the scientific papers looking for the strange thing I'd seen.

00:34:23Then you just come up absolutely blank. There's nothing.

00:34:29You're going into a place that's understudied and almost on a weekly basis you can find out something new to science.

00:34:54According to the literature, octopus are supposed to be a nocturnal species.

00:35:09Now was she more active at night?

00:35:14It's a little bit scarier in the dark.

00:35:24These incredible sounds of the humpback whales coming through the water.

00:35:35You're on hyper alert.

00:35:44I couldn't find her. She wasn't in her den.

00:35:50I'd kind of given up and was going back to the shore.

00:36:01Something just made me veer slightly to the left.

00:36:08And there she is. Right in extremely shallow water.

00:36:16Can't see what she's doing.

00:36:27These lightning fast waves.

00:36:32These lightning fast strikes.

00:36:40Using her arm like this strange weapon.

00:36:45Just rolling it up in this fraction of a second.

00:36:52And I saw her catch three fish like this.

00:36:58I'd never seen her catching a fish during the day.

00:37:04Super dangerous out in the deeper forest at night.

00:37:10This incredibly clever animal retreats to the shallows where it's difficult for these sharks to get to.

00:37:16And takes advantage of all the wonderful food available there.

00:37:47The first instinct is to try and scare the sharks away.

00:37:53But then you realize that you'll be interfering with the whole process of the forest.

00:38:09She was out of the den moving around near the edge of the forest.

00:38:16I noticed the shark.

00:38:29The body was slightly hunched forward and was following the scent trail.

00:38:35This is not good.

00:38:40This is not good.

00:39:03I think, thank God she's safe. She's right under the rock.

00:39:10These things are coming right into that crack.

00:39:20And the next minute the shark is actually clamped down on one of her arms doing this terrifying death roll.

00:39:39And I can clearly see her severed arm in its mouth.

00:39:50You get that terrible feeling in your stomach.

00:40:10And thank God she managed to get really deep in that crack.

00:40:16She was moving very badly, slowly, very weak.

00:40:23She's bleeding. It smells in the water.

00:40:29She's bleeding.

00:40:33She's bleeding.

00:40:37She's bleeding.

00:40:41She's bleeding.

00:40:45She's bleeding.

00:40:49Bleeding that smells in the water.

00:40:57That's quite a distance to the den.

00:41:07Are these sharks going to pitch up again?

00:41:20I thought about helping her back physically to the den.

00:41:34But luckily I didn't need to.

00:41:50I didn't know what was going to happen to her

00:42:00or if this would make her weak and vulnerable and they'd finish her off that night.

00:42:11And I couldn't help feeling, had I been responsible for this?

00:42:20Was she out because I was there?

00:42:26I felt very vulnerable, as if somehow what happened to her happened to me in some strange way.

00:42:38And then this almost felt psychologically like I was going through a type of dismembering.

00:42:45You start thinking about your own death and your own vulnerability,

00:42:51worried about your family or child.

00:42:57I hadn't been a person that was overly sentimental towards animals before.

00:43:03I realised I was changing.

00:43:10Especially wild creatures.

00:43:16It's a scary feeling, going into the water early the next day.

00:43:47I was very relieved that she was alive, breathing.

00:43:58She's so weak that she can't make those vibrant colours of a healthy octopus

00:44:04and she's just dull and white.

00:44:17And now I'm worried, how's she getting food?

00:44:27You are crossing a line when you interfere in the lives of animals.

00:44:33But I was just too overcome with my feelings for her.

00:44:40I don't think it really helped.

00:44:46And she's right at the back of the den, you know, just not moving much.

00:44:55I was just checking every day to see if she was OK.

00:45:01Wondering, is this the last day? Am I not going to see her?

00:45:10SIGHS

00:45:22The big relief came a week or so later

00:45:26and I could see it sort of healed over pretty fast.

00:45:33And then the most amazing thing, to see this tiny little miniature,

00:45:41perfect miniature arm starting to grow back.

00:45:53And it gave me a strange sort of confidence

00:45:59to get past this incredible difficulty.

00:46:03And I felt in my life I was getting past the difficulties I had.

00:46:10In a strange way, our lives were mirroring each other.

00:46:21My relationship with people, with humans, was changing.

00:46:29My son at this stage was very interested in everything underwater.

00:46:52And every day I'd tell him the stories.

00:47:00He'd seen her, he'd met her. I'd taken him so many times.

00:47:10The arm becomes pretty functional, even when it's half-grown.

00:47:30And then slowly, as the arm grew, she grew her confidence back.

00:47:39Eventually, about a hundred days later, that arm fully regrown.

00:47:52Amazing feeling to think that this animal is capable of that

00:47:57and can withstand such an attack and fully recover.

00:48:03The Arm

00:48:25After a while, she was just carrying on with her normal activities.

00:48:31And she started a whole new development of seeing even deeper into her world.

00:48:45It was a nice, calm, clear day.

00:48:49She comes round a corner and spots a crab.

00:48:56The problem when you're a crab, you're being now hunted by a liquid animal.

00:49:03She can pour herself through a tiny little crack.

00:49:10And the crab seems to sense her and goes and hides underneath a big poisonous anemone.

00:49:28And then she waits and hides.

00:49:40And then the crab thinks, OK, everything's all right.

00:49:46And makes the mistake of leaving that anemone.

00:49:53And then the crab thinks, OK, everything's all right.

00:49:59And makes the mistake of leaving that anemone.

00:50:22And then the crab thinks, OK, everything's all right.

00:50:28And makes the mistake of leaving that anemone.

00:50:34And then the crab thinks, OK, everything's all right.

00:50:40And makes the mistake of leaving that anemone.

00:50:46And then the crab thinks, OK, everything's all right.

00:50:52And then the crab thinks, OK, everything's all right.

00:50:58And then the crab thinks, OK, everything's all right.

00:51:04And then the crab thinks, OK, everything's all right.

00:51:10And then the crab thinks, OK, everything's all right.

00:51:16And then the crab thinks, OK, everything's all right.

00:51:22And then the crab thinks, OK, everything's all right.

00:51:28And then the crab thinks, OK, everything's all right.

00:51:34And the crab thinks, OK, everything's all right.

00:51:47It's quite a messy eater. Bits going everywhere, smells going out.

00:51:52And then you just look around, and you see these Brittle stars surprisingly fast...

00:51:59...just being drawn to her.

00:52:04The mass of them sort of overwhelm her and she doesn't seem sure of what to do or how to deal with them.

00:52:12So I thought, yeah, this is like a real problem now.

00:52:15She's always going to have this problem of brittle stars taking all her food.

00:52:25Not that long in the future, she's thought, okay, brittle stars stealing my food

00:52:31and has this amazing method of just picking them up with her suckers and gently just throwing them out the den.

00:52:40Now she's completely the boss.

00:52:52She initially adopted the same method to crab hunting with lobster.

00:52:57You just suddenly see lobsters are shooting out of the reef.

00:53:05I'm thinking now, oh, she's definitely going to catch this one.

00:53:36Time and time again, they just evade her.

00:53:48And then a couple of weeks later, watching her coming around the side,

00:53:55corralling me so that she can then get between the lobster and myself,

00:54:01using me as part of her hunting strategy.

00:54:09Instead of that messy lunge, throwing her web over the top of me.

00:54:18And then there's nowhere for it to go.

00:54:21This is an animal that is strategizing and working out very quickly how best to hunt a very tricky prey.

00:54:40A lot of her intelligence is built from the sheer number of prey that she's hunting.

00:54:50The prey that she has to catch, all sorts of animals.

00:54:55All the mollusks she's capturing, they're quite easy to catch, but they've got these incredibly hard shells.

00:55:06Now how the hell does she kill and eat them?

00:55:12At the base of all those arms, there's a drill that can drill through hard shell.

00:55:20And then drop venom in there like a snake and see how that mollusk reacts.

00:55:30But some of these mollusks will only relax if that drill is precisely in the apex of the shell,

00:55:38and they abduct her muscle.

00:55:43She basically has to do geometry to work out exactly the precise spot where she needs to drill that shell in order to get her food.

00:55:56This is high level invertebrate intelligence.

00:56:00Her ability to learn and remember details.

00:56:08And it hit me how she was teaching me so much.

00:56:18You just can't wait to get up in the morning because there's so much to do to understand every little tiny mark,

00:56:27every little behavior, every species, what they're doing, how they're interacting.

00:56:41People ask, why are you going to the same place every day?

00:56:45But that's when you see the subtle differences.

00:56:49And that's when you get to know the wild.

00:56:52So we know there's thousands of threads going off from the octopus to all the other animals, predator and prey,

00:56:59and then this incredible forest just nurturing all of this.

00:57:08And now I know how the helmet shell is connected to the urchin and how the octopus is connected to the helmet shell.

00:57:14And as I draw all these lines, all these stories are just being thrown up.

00:57:34It's almost like the forest mind really could feel it.

00:57:38That big creature that was thousands of times more awake and intelligent than I am.

00:57:47It's like a giant underwater brain operating over millions of years.

00:57:55And it just keeps everything in balance.

00:58:09Everything seemed at this point sort of perfect in the forest.

00:58:21And of course, you know, you've forgotten those predators are ever present.

00:59:08I just have this burnt in my memory, this huge shock to suddenly approaching her.

00:59:30She kept still and tried to hide.

00:59:38And you just saw the shark swimming on the periphery, picking up a scent.

00:59:50And I thought, oh no, it's all nightmare happening again.

01:00:08And I thought, oh no, it's all nightmare happening again.

01:00:38She gets up in the canopy and she's wrapping many leaves of kelp tightly around her body and then just peering out.

01:01:08All the smells on the kelp, so the sharks are now biting and snapping at the kelp.

01:01:38She's shot out the back.

01:02:09She just climbs out of a rock, leaves the water.

01:02:17I just, you know, almost can't believe my eyes.

01:02:25But the problem is, of course, she's got to come back.

01:02:28On the other side, the shark picks up a scent again and this crazy chase is on.

01:02:58And then I see her in a very quick movement, picking up maybe close to a hundred shells and stone.

01:03:29And then folding her arms over her vulnerable head.

01:03:35But in that moment, I realized this is this crazy thing I saw so long ago.

01:03:58Next minute, the shark grabs her.

01:04:29But I had to breathe.

01:04:34Rush to the surface as fast as you can.

01:04:39Straight back down again.

01:04:46And it's like, OK, now this is too crazy.

01:04:50Somehow she's managed to maneuver herself into the least dangerous place and that's on the shark's back.

01:04:59The shark tries to take off and is swimming away.

01:05:15Takes a few seconds to figure out what the hell's going on here.

01:05:19But you can immediately tell she's now got the upper hand.

01:05:28As the shark goes near some of the thick kelp, she just pushes off the back.

01:05:43Drops the remaining shells and jets away.

01:05:58And the shark is just being completely outwitted.

01:06:28The shark comes, does one pass, but she's completely safe.

01:06:46There's nothing it can do.

01:06:48And it leaves.

01:06:49How she can think that quickly and make those life and death decisions, it's just, you know, pretty, pretty incredible.

01:07:19I was around for a good 80 percent of her life.

01:07:32Each moment is so precious because it's so short.

01:07:36There was this one incredible day.

01:07:39Big shoal of dream fish.

01:07:42Fairly shallow water.

01:07:46Suddenly she's reaching up for the surface like that.

01:07:57Initially, I thought she's hunting the fish.

01:08:02Then I was like, hold on.

01:08:05When she hunts, she's strategic and she's like focused.

01:08:16This behavior doesn't feel predatory to me.

01:08:23It took a long time to actually understand that.

01:08:27Took a long time to actually like process it.

01:08:32But I couldn't help thinking she's playing with the fish.

01:08:50You see play often in social animals.

01:08:53Here's a highly antisocial animal playing with fish.

01:09:01It takes that animal to a different level.

01:09:05It takes that animal to a different level.

01:09:18Oh, then she completely lost interest in the fish.

01:09:22Rushed over.

01:09:26Grabbed hold of me.

01:09:34And that was the last time we had physical contact.

01:10:05And if I think back,

01:10:08and I remember it was a very rough day, very turbulent.

01:10:19Sediment everywhere.

01:10:24Go down and, whoa!

01:10:27There's another big octopus.

01:10:29Go down and, whoa!

01:10:32There's another big octopus right next to her.

01:10:42It's very, very rare to see two octopus close together.

01:10:48Oh, my God, what's going on?

01:10:51And then seeing that both animals are pretty relaxed

01:10:55and realizing, OK, the mating is beginning.

01:11:11By this stage I knew quite well

01:11:14the stages of an octopus's life.

01:11:16So while I was very excited that this mating was beginning,

01:11:20there was this sort of, this dread in the bottom of my stomach.

01:11:35She wasn't coming out of that den.

01:11:38There was no more feeding, no more hunting.

01:11:41A huge part of her body is actually given to those eggs.

01:11:45So she drops in weight,

01:11:48and she loses an enormous amount of strength.

01:11:56The eggs are laid right in the back in the dark.

01:12:00It's impossible to see them.

01:12:03I just keep going every day and just check.

01:12:08She's oxygenating the eggs with her siphon, looking after them.

01:12:13She's just slowly dying

01:12:16and timing her death exactly for the hatching of those eggs.

01:12:20I mean, it's struck home so hard for me.

01:12:25Here's an invertebrate, essentially a mollusk,

01:12:29sacrificing her own life for her young.

01:12:36And she's still alive.

01:12:39She's still alive.

01:12:42She's still alive.

01:12:45She's still alive.

01:12:47For her young.

01:13:01All those eggs hatched,

01:13:04they're tiny, and they go into the water column.

01:13:08Hundreds of thousands of them.

01:13:11And the next thing I saw,

01:13:14she's washed out the den, barely alive.

01:13:24And the fish, you know, feeding on her,

01:13:27and a lot of the scavengers coming to feed on her.

01:13:32It was just heartbreaking.

01:13:41A part of me just wanted to hold her and chase them away,

01:13:46but I didn't do that.

01:14:01The next day,

01:14:04a big shark came.

01:14:11And just took her away, you know, into the misty forest.

01:14:29Often, I go,

01:14:32I don't know,

01:14:35I don't know what to do.

01:14:38Often, I go to the place of her main den.

01:14:47And I just float above it and feel her there.

01:14:52Of course I miss her.

01:15:07But...

01:15:13I mean, in some crazy way, it was a relief.

01:15:19It was a relief because the intensity

01:15:22of going every day and tracking her

01:15:26and trying to capture it was...

01:15:30was tough, in a way.

01:15:33I mean, I sort of slept, dreamt

01:15:35of this animal.

01:15:38You know, I was...

01:15:41in my mind, thinking like an octopus.

01:15:44It was also taxing, in a way.

01:16:00But underneath that,

01:16:02there's this incredible pride for this animal

01:16:05that's been through impossible odds to get to this place.

01:16:12I mean, an unimaginable life.

01:16:33One of the most exciting things ever in my life,

01:16:37taking my son,

01:16:40walking along the shore,

01:16:43and just showing him the wonders of nature

01:16:46and the details and the intricacies.

01:16:55I was getting so much from the wild

01:16:58and I could actually now give back.

01:17:00I had so much energy to give back.

01:17:10He's like a little marine biologist now.

01:17:13He knows so much.

01:17:20A very powerful swimmer.

01:17:26And he's a very good swimmer.

01:17:29And as he gets older,

01:17:32he seems to want to do it more and more.

01:17:43To see that develop,

01:17:46a strong sense of himself,

01:17:54an incredible confidence,

01:17:57but the most important thing,

01:18:00a gentleness.

01:18:02And I think that's a thing that

01:18:05thousands of hours in nature can teach a child.

01:18:16A few months later, after she died,

01:18:19he actually found this tiny little octopus.

01:18:27It's very rare to see an animal that small.

01:18:35They have up to half a million young,

01:18:39a handful survive.

01:18:41So it's a pretty tough bird to have to walk.

01:18:45But that's their strategy, live fast and die young.

01:18:53We kind of imagined

01:18:56she might be one of her young.

01:18:59Kind of the right size, the right time.

01:19:05And it was joyous.

01:19:07It was like, well, there she is.

01:19:27She'd made me realize

01:19:30just how precious wild places are.

01:19:43And you go into that water,

01:19:47and it's extremely liberating.

01:19:50All your emotions are released.

01:19:53It's extremely liberating.

01:19:56All your worries and problems and life drama just dissolve.

01:20:11You slowly start to care about all the animals,

01:20:15even the tiniest little animals.

01:20:18You realize that everyone is very important.

01:20:27To sense how vulnerable these wild animals' lives are,

01:20:32and actually then how vulnerable all our lives on this planet are.

01:20:37My relationship with the sea forest and its creatures deepens

01:20:45week after month, after year, after year.

01:20:53You're in touch with this wild place, and it's speaking to you.

01:20:58It's letting you know,

01:21:00you're in touch with this wild place, and it's speaking to you.

01:21:05Its language is visible.

01:21:22I fell in love with her, but also with that amazing wildness

01:21:27that she represented and how that changed me.

01:21:45What she taught me was to feel

01:21:49that you're part of this place, not a visitor.

01:21:53That's a huge difference.

01:21:57You're a part of it.

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