Fierce battle between octopus and seal stuns scuba diver off Canada. See ‘rare’ video
Off the coast of Canada, a scuba diver came face-to-face with a pair of dueling sea creatures — and caught the battle on video.
Maxime Veilleux was scuba diving at night in Nanoose Bay when “a seal just zipped by us,” she told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Veilleux followed the seal and found it “upside down,” she said in a Jan. 22 video posted to her YouTube account called Scuba Max. (Warning: This video contains strong language that some audiences may find offensive.)
At first, “we thought (the seal) was feeding on some algae off the rock,” Veilleux said.
“We realized that it was actually attacking a giant Pacific octopus, and we were there right in time to see it all unfold,” she told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
A video shows the fierce battle between the seal and giant Pacific octopus. The seal pulls at one of the octopus’s arms before surfacing to catch its breath.
“Clearly, the octopus was tired, but when the seal came back down, the octopus tried to escape and inked at him,” Veilleux said in the video.
“It was cool to see the octopus ink to try to confuse the predator,” she wrote in the video’s description.
The video shows the octopus spewing ink as it swims close to the camera. The seal, however, seems undeterred by the ink and quickly catches up with the octopus. The pair grapple, and the seal manages to bite one of the octopus’s arms several times.
“This is pretty rare and very exciting to watch,” Veilleux told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “Our hearts were beating pretty quickly.”
“In the end, the seal finally managed to rip one arm off,” Veilleux said in her YouTube video. The octopus got away without further injuries and “will be able to regrow his lost arm.”
“I felt really bad for this octopus, but I don’t think that humans should interfere with nature,” she said.
Nanoose Bay is on the east coast of Vancouver Island and about 50 miles west of Vancouver.
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