Marine geologist Peter Harris, a 1976 graduate of North Kitsap
High School, has been awarded the prestigious Francis P. Shepard
Medal for Sustained Excellence in Marine Geology.
Peter Harris
The annual award, from the Society for Sedimentary Geology,
recognizes Peter’s 30 years of research accomplishments — “from the
polar to the tropical,” as the judges described it — including his
discovery of new coral reefs off Australia.
Also noteworthy is his work documenting the margins of the
Antarctic continent; describing the prehistoric formation of the
Fly River Delta in Papua New Guinea; and explaining changes in the
“Antarctic bottom water,” a dense water mass surrounding
Antarctica. Peter has published more than 100 research papers in
scientific journals.
After an awards ceremony in Salt Lake City, Utah, Peter returned
last week to Kitsap County, where he spoke to me about his current
efforts on upcoming state-of-the-environment report for the United
Nations. He is working on an oceans chapter for the “Sixth Global Environmental
Outlook,” known as GEO-6, which will be used to advance
environmental policies around the world.
“There are so many environmental issues in the ocean,” he told
me, “but we were asked to identify three things that are the most
urgent.”
The surprise trick of coming up behind someone and tapping him
or her on the opposite shoulder is a technique that seems to work
especially well for the larger Pacific striped octopus.
This is how the octopuses often catch a shrimp for dinner, as
you can see from the first video on this page. For a little more
emotional drama, watch this same video with a musical soundtrack
added by UC
Berkeley Campus Life.
The larger Pacific striped octopus seems to be the odd one out,
according to recent observations by marine biologist Roy Caldwell
of the University of California at Berkeley. Findings reported this
month by Caldwell and colleagues in the open-access journal
“PLOS ONE” confirm strange stories told about the octopus over
the past 30 years — behaviors far different from those of most
octopuses.
Two years of observations of live large Pacific striped
octopuses in Berkeley laboratories and elsewhere have confirmed
behaviors never seen among most octopuses. Activities include
unusual beak-to-beak mating, which looks like the animals are
kissing; males and females shacking up together, sharing food and
having sex for days at a time; and females living long beyond the
time they lay their first clutch of eggs, as they continue to eat,
mate and lay more eggs.
Male larger Pacific striped
octopus stalks its prey.
Photo: Roy Caldwell
The paper also discusses the possibility that these odd
octopuses may live together in colonies, as observed by scuba
divers, and come to recognize each other based on unique color
patterns and postures.
As for tapping a shrimp on the shoulder, “I’ve never seen
anything like it,” Caldwell told Robert Sanders of
Berkeley News, the media outlet for UC Berkeley.
“Octopuses typically pounce on their prey or poke around in
holes until they find something,” he continued. “When this octopus
sees a shrimp at a distance, it compresses itself and creeps up,
extends an arm up and over the shrimp, touches it on the far side
and either catches it or scares it into its other arms.”
In addition to Caldwell, authors reporting observations in the
paper are Christine L. Huffard of Monterey Bay Aquarium Research
Institute; Arcadio Rodaniche of the Smithsonian Tropical Research
Institute; and Caldwell, Huffard and Richard Ross, all of the
California Academy of Sciences.
The larger Pacific striped octopus is perhaps the oddest of an
odd group of creatures, with their shifting octopus shapes,
mesmerizing eyes and uncanny intelligence, Richard Ross told
Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein.
“They’re aliens alive on our planet,” Ross said, “and it feels
like they have plans.”
MORE VIDEOS FROM THE JOURNAL PLOS ONE
Two larger Pacific Striped Octopuses appear to embrace and kiss
in a unique mating ritual.
Sometimes these octopuses move along by bouncing across the
bottom of the ocean.
These octopuses can change their coloration along a bilateral
line while twirling their arms.
