Over the weekend, dozens of octopi were spotted crawling on a beach in Wales. This unnatural phenomenon has not yet been explained but approximately 20 or more octopi have been seen crawling up a beach in New Quay in Ceredigion on Friday night. Some of the octopi could be seen moving up the beach while others were dead.
Other residents around the area say more octopi were spotted the days before.
Some experts believe the cause to be due to the recent storms that have occurred in the Irish Sea.
Brett Stones, the man behind Sea Mor Dolphin Watching Boat Trips, said that he saw one live octopus walking up the beach and that he photographed many more that had already died.
In an interview with Wales Online, he said: ‘they were coming out of the water and crawling up the beach. We don’t quite know what’s causing it.’
He continued: ‘perhaps it’s because the sea has been quite rough recently but I’ve never seen anything like it before. They were walking on the tips of their legs.’
He went on to say that his friend spotted approximately 20 octopi on the beach the night before and he also said that he helped the surviving ones back into the water.
The curator at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth, James Wright, said that the appearance of these octopi in this new area is ‘quite odd’ and that it could point to ‘something [being] wrong with them.’
‘As the areas where they are exhibiting this odd behavior coincides with the two areas hit by the two recent low pressures depressions and associated storms of Ophelia and Brian, it could be supposed that these have affected them.’
James postulates that the recent storms in the Irish sea have forced the octopi to relocate to a new place.
‘It could simply be injuries sustained by the rough weather itself or there could be a sensitivity to a change in atmospheric pressure.’
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