When a pale, fin-eared octopus glided into the frame of an underwater robot’s camera near an unnamed Palau seamount during a 2024 Ocean Exploration Trust expedition, researchers could be heard gasping in real time — “I’m shaking,” one said, laughing. “It’s like meeting a celebrity — hello!” The animal they encountered was a Cirroteuthis, a finned octopus belonging to the cirrate family, and its appearance on the live feed of the Nautilus Live telepresence stream was the kind of event that marine biologists count on one hand per expedition season: a live, freely moving deep-sea animal that science has almost no other way to study. New media coverage of the encounter — including a report by Discover Wildlife marine writer Melissa Hobson — has drawn fresh attention to the filmed a live Cirroteuthis octopus and to the broader significance of deep-sea ROV operations.
The sighting occurred during an active dive by the Ocean Exploration Trust and NOAA near the Palau National Marine Sanctuary — a protected zone that remains less than 20 percent mapped to high resolution, with over 225 submarine seamounts inside its exclusive economic zone still largely uncharacterized. The dive was conducted as part of the Nippon Foundation–Nekton Ocean Census partnership, which joined the Ocean Census Alliance with the Ocean Exploration Trust in August 2023.
What the Cameras Caught — and Why It Cannot Be Replicated in a Lab
The footage shows the octopus moving through the water column by beating two fin-like projections attached to its mantle — the “ear” structures that gave the informal name “dumbo” to an entire family of deep-sea cirrate octopods. The animal’s eight arms trail beneath it, each lined with suckers and fine, hair-like projections called cirri, which function as sensory and feeding tools. The cirri distinguish the cirrate octopuses from their shallow-water cousins: they are one of the structural features that define the suborder Cirrata, which includes both the Cirroteuthidae family (to which Cirroteuthis belongs) and the Grimpoteuthidae family (the Grimpoteuthis “dumbo” genus more commonly reported in news footage).
What makes every cirrate sighting scientifically critical is not the footage’s visual drama but its irreplaceability. Cirrate octopuses have semi-gelatinous bodies that deform on contact with warmer, lower-pressure water. When one of these animals is accidentally brought to the surface in a fishing net — the most common way they are encountered — the specimen that arrives is usually too distorted to study systematically. Behavioral data — how the fins beat, how the arms trail, how the cirri engage food — is lost entirely on retrieval. The ROV camera in the water column is not a supplement to laboratory study; for these animals, it is the primary scientific instrument.
Why These Animals Can Be Filmed but Not Named
The Palau animal was tentatively identified as Cirroteuthis by the expedition’s scientists, but species-level identification from ROV footage alone is nearly impossible. Precise taxonomy requires physical examination: the shape of the internal shell, the gill structure, the number and arrangement of suckers, genetic sequencing. These are features that can be read only from a specimen, and the specimen must survive retrieval.
There are 17 recognized Grimpoteuthis species in the genus alone, with new species still being formally named. In April 2025, researchers described Grimpoteuthis feitiana from a single specimen collected at a Caroline Seamount in the western Pacific at a depth of approximately 1,240 meters (about 4,069 feet). In 2021, University of Bonn researchers formally described Grimpoteuthis imperator — the “emperor dumbo” — without dissecting the only known specimen, using MRI and micro-CT scanning combined with targeted genetic sampling to build the first complete morphological description of a cephalopod species through non-invasive imaging alone. The species had been recovered from 3,913 to 4,417 meters (approximately 12,838 to 14,491 feet) in the North Pacific’s Emperor Seamounts region.
That methodology — film it, or scan it without cutting it — describes the limits of what science can do with these animals. The deepest confirmed octopus observation, published in 2020 from observations made in the Java Trench the prior year, was made at 6,957 meters (approximately 22,825 feet) — the deepest any octopus has ever been confirmed. It was an ROV observation, and the animal was identified to genus but not species.
Where Palau’s Waters Fit — and Why They Are Still Largely Unknown
The Palau National Marine Sanctuary, formally protected under the Palauan name Euotelel a Klingil a Debel Belau, was established in 2015 and covers approximately 80 percent of Palau’s exclusive economic zone, closed to fishing and extractive activities. Yet the region’s deep-sea habitats — more than 225 submarine seamounts, the extreme depths of the Palau Trench, and the biological communities that depend on the cold, high-pressure environment between them — remained almost entirely uncharacterized. Less than 20 percent mapped to high resolution, Palau’s deep ocean contains ecosystems that prior surveys never reached.
The E/V Nautilus dives in the region, funded by NOAA Ocean Exploration via the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute, represent a formal US government commitment made at the 2022 Our Oceans Conference. The expedition partnership between OET and the Palau International Coral Reef Center (PICRC) includes Palauan scientists, educators, and cultural liaisons working alongside the ship’s scientific team — and all data gathered is provided to the Palauan government for ongoing ocean management.
The seamount adjacent to where this octopus appeared had not been characterized before these expeditions began. Its depth, its geological structure, and its biological community existed on no prior survey. The cirrate octopus that drifted into camera range did so in a place that, from a scientific standpoint, was unknown.
What Only a Scientist at Sea Can Produce — and What Anyone Can Now Watch
The encounter was broadcast in real time through OET’s Nautilus Live telepresence system, which streams ROV video from the ship to a global audience and allows shore-based scientists and educators to watch and communicate with the expedition team during dives. The model is designed explicitly to extend participation in deep-sea science beyond the physical limits of berths at sea — a ship the size of a research vessel carries a fixed number of people, but a live-streamed dive can reach millions.
Participant scientist Bella Iannotta, embedded with the research team aboard E/V Nautilus, described the encounter as witnessing “something very rare and very surprising.” Earlier in the same dive watch, the team had half-jokingly predicted they would spot an octopus: “We thought we might see two,” one researcher recalled on air, “but we’re not gonna be greedy.” The animal’s arrival made that prediction exact.
How This Fits the Ocean Census at Its Most Productive Moment
The sighting came during the most productive year in the Ocean Census’s history. Between April 2025 and March 2026, the Nippon Foundation–Nekton Ocean Census documented 1,121 previously unknown marine species — a 54 percent increase in annual marine species identification rates. That figure came from 13 expeditions and nine Species Discovery Workshops held worldwide. More than half of the new species — 728 of the 1,121 — emerged not from new field expeditions but from researchers re-examining specimens already held in museum and laboratory collections, now analyzed with modern genetic sequencing and high-resolution imaging tools.
The Ocean Census was founded in April 2023 by the Nippon Foundation (Japan’s largest non-profit foundation) and Nekton, a UK-based marine science and conservation institute, with the goal of describing at least 100,000 new marine species within a decade. An estimated 90 percent of ocean species remain formally undescribed. Scientists believe the total number of species living in Earth’s oceans may exceed two million, against the approximately 240,000 currently known.
The cirrate octopuses filmed near Palau are not among the 1,121 newly named species — video footage cannot do that. But they are part of the evidence base that the Ocean Census and its partner institutions are assembling: a record of what lives, at what depth, in what behavior, in a section of ocean that maps showed as blank.
How Do Scientists Watch Dumbo Octopuses Live?
Viewers can watch Ocean Exploration Trust’s real-time deep-sea dives as they happen at NautilusLive.org. The free public livestream runs during active dive operations and includes narration from the ship’s science team.
Frequently Asked Questions
How rare is it to see a dumbo octopus alive in the wild?
Extremely rare, in practical terms. Cirrate octopuses like Grimpoteuthis and Cirroteuthis live almost exclusively at depths between roughly 3,300 and 23,000 feet (1,000 and 7,000 meters), which no human or crewed vessel can reach without specialized equipment. ROVs spend a small fraction of any given day in the water, and the deep ocean is vast. A single expedition may see zero, one, or — rarely — three on a single dive, as Nautilus crews have documented. Each sighting is considered a scientifically meaningful event rather than a routine observation.
Why can’t scientists just collect one of these animals and study it in a tank?
The semi-gelatinous bodies of cirrate octopuses cannot survive the pressure and temperature changes involved in being brought to the surface. By the time a specimen arrives, the behavioral information — how the fins beat, how the arms position for feeding, how the cirri engage prey — is permanently lost, and the body itself is typically too distorted for reliable morphological study. This is why ROV footage is the primary tool for studying how these animals actually live, even though footage alone cannot confirm which exact species is on camera.
If scientists can’t collect the animal, how do they identify which species it is?
They often cannot, precisely. Species-level identification in cirrate octopuses requires physical examination of the internal cartilaginous shell, gill structure, sucker arrangement, and genetic material — features that require a physical specimen. When the 2021 description of Grimpoteuthis imperator was published, researchers used MRI and micro-CT scanning on the single recovered specimen to avoid dissecting it, while still generating the morphological data required for a formal species description. Video footage from the Palau dive identifies the animal to family — Cirroteuthidae, probably Cirroteuthis — but species-level certainty requires a specimen science may never retrieve.
What is the Ocean Census, and why is the Palau dive connected to it?
The Ocean Census is the world’s largest organized effort to discover and formally describe marine life, launched in April 2023 by the Nippon Foundation and Nekton with a ten-year goal of naming at least 100,000 new ocean species. In August 2023, the Ocean Exploration Trust — which operates E/V Nautilus — joined the Ocean Census partnership. Palau dives funded by NOAA Ocean Exploration contribute to that mission by gathering observational data from deep-sea areas that have never been surveyed, making it possible to document what species live there even when specimens cannot be retrieved.
