The not so elusive Octopus

We've been waiting out our time here in Kwajalein anchored in front of the island Bigee.  It has some really nice snorkeling and after being here for a week (our third time being here for a week), we've gotten to know the coral heads pretty well.  Given that, I was surprised the other day when I snorkeled over the same old coral head and found a good sized octopus!  He wasn't even all that skittish...just sort of looked at me and moved around a bit.  I came back the next day and there he sat.  Yesterday, Andy was bored and I told him he should take his camera and go get some pictures of the little guy.

"Octopus is hard...I'll probably just get one picture and then he'll run off."  Not one to shy away from something "hard," I sensed a little lack of motivation.
"Consider it a challenge then oh masterful one of the underwater camera..."
That helped.  He got off his tail and went for a dive.

About 10 minutes later I heard him hollering for me....the octopus was out in the open sand by the boat.  I grabbed my mask and fins and swam out to him.  Using his spare regulator I went down and watched him work the little guy.  I've seen this in videos but never in person....the crazy little 8 legged thing RAN across the sand trying to get away from us.  He (or she?) literally RAN and RAN and RAN.  It was so cool!  After a few minutes of watching him, I went back to the boat and Andy continued the photo shoot for another hour.  Evidently, the octopus got used to him and eventually ignored him altogether. He came back with an enormous amount of pictures with the octopus in all sorts of contortions, shapes, colors and textures.  I asked him to narrow it down to a few for me so I could post them here.

The icing on the cake....this morning I went out for one last snorkel before heading back to Ebeye and after seeing a sea turtle swim away from me, I saw TWO octopi out and about, hunting around in a totally different area.  We looked these up and it turns out to be a Day Octopus...presumably because it hunts and wanders around in the daytime, unlike most of it's cousins who are nocturnal.  Pretty common in the Pacific, but not common for us.  I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I did.  Keep in mind, this is all the same octopus.