One of the most amazing and mind-boggling creatures we saw was the camouflaging octopus. We were about 14m underwater at the Kapalai house reef when we saw this little octopus, about 25cm long, being stalked by 3 nasty-looking fish. They wouldn't let him out of their sight and blocked off all his escape routes. We hovered there for about 10 minutes, watching in awe as the octopus melted into his surroundings. Settling between a blue, spongy coral with vertical tubular protrusions on his left, and a light and dark brown rock on his right, he seamlessly became both, growing light blue moving tubes on his left and melting into the brown rock on his right.
That was one of the most amazing things I'd even seen. I really wished there and then that I had an underwater video camera. It would have been jaw-dropping if I didn't have to keep my mouth firmly clamped around my regulator to breathe. There we were, clumsy and fully dependent on our big air tank and dive gear, watching effortless underwater magic. Diving always fills me with great awe and respect for creation.
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