Eight Arms, Three Hearts — and One Remarkable Melbourne Story
World Octopus Day falls on Thursday 8 October — and for Victorians there is an unexpected connection between one of the ocean's most remarkable creatures, the seafood on our plates and the history of Melbourne itself.
Octopuses are extraordinary animals.
They have three hearts, blue blood, remarkable intelligence, and an ability to change colour and texture instantaneously. They inhabit environments ranging from shallow coastal waters to some of the deepest parts of the ocean.
They are also seafood.
And here in Australia, octopus is increasingly finding its way onto restaurant menus and into seafood displays.
But this World Octopus Day, Seafood Consumers Association has discovered another story worth telling.
Because Melbourne once had an Octopus of its own.
And this one was made of timber, steel, and steam.
First, meet the animal
There are around 300 known species of octopus distributed through the world's oceans.
Their most famous anatomical curiosity is their three hearts. Two pump blood through the gills, while another circulates it around the body.
And their blood is blue rather than red because oxygen is transported using copper-containing hemocyanin, rather than the iron-containing haemoglobin familiar to us.
But anatomy is only the beginning.
Octopuses can solve problems, manipulate objects, negotiate remarkably small openings, and alter their colour and skin texture for camouflage and communication.
Their nervous system is particularly extraordinary. Much of their neural processing occurs through a distributed network extending into their eight arms.
They do not simply look unusual.
They experience the underwater world in a way profoundly different from us.
From tiny to enormous
Octopus diversity is equally remarkable.
At one end are tiny species weighing little more than a gram.
At the other is the Giant Pacific Octopus, the largest octopus species, capable of reaching extraordinary dimensions.
And while octopuses are often associated with rocky reefs and coastal waters, distinct species occupy an enormous range of marine environments — from the intertidal zone to the deep ocean.
There is another anatomical fact worth remembering next time you see one disappear through an impossible gap.
An octopus has no skeleton. Its principal hard structure is its beak. If that can fit through an opening, much of the rest of the animal often can as well.
Octopus on the Australian plate
Octopus is deeply embedded in Mediterranean and Asian food cultures and is becoming increasingly familiar to Australian consumers.
Australia has its own commercial fisheries.
Victoria's dedicated Octopus Fishery — Eastern Zone, established in 2020, principally harvests Pale Octopus (Octopus pallidus) in East Gippsland.
The Victorian Fisheries Authority says purpose-built unbaited shelter pots are used. The method is particularly interesting because the octopus enters the pot seeking shelter rather than being attracted with bait.
The fishery is quota-managed, limited-entry and monitored, with fishers also needed to collect research information to assist management.
Gloomy Octopus and Māori Octopus may also be taken.
It is a comparatively small fishery, but it provides a fascinating example of a new Australian seafood industry developing around a species that consumers once encountered principally in Mediterranean and Asian cuisine.
Buying octopus? Ask the same questions - World Octopus Day is also a useful opportunity to apply the principles SCA encourages whenever buying seafood.
What species is it?
Where did it come from?
Was it Australian caught or imported?
How was it harvested?
Is the seller able to tell you, its story?
Those questions matter because Australia also imports octopus products from overseas.
“Octopus” describes the animal broadly. It does not tell consumers everything they may want to know about the seafood in front of them.
Good seafood purchasing begins with curiosity.
Which, appropriately enough, brings us back to Melbourne.
Melbourne's other Octopus
On Melbourne community radio program Radio Marinara, maritime historian Rex Hunter was recently given an unusual challenge: find a connection between Victorian maritime history and World Octopus Day.
He found one.
To understand it, we need to travel back to nineteenth-century Melbourne.
The Yarra River that early European settlers encountered was nothing like the shipping channel we know today. It was shallow and narrow in places, with falls around today's Queens Bridge separating salt and fresh water.
As Melbourne expanded — particularly during the gold-rush era — getting increasingly large vessels into the city became an enormous engineering challenge.
Dredging became essential.
Early attempts included a hand-powered dredge. Later came a steam-powered dredger called The Gripper.
Then, in 1877, the Melbourne Harbour Trust was established.
Its task was enormous: improve Melbourne's port, reshape access along the Yarra, and accommodate the rapidly growing maritime trade upon which the booming city depended.
Sir John Coode's celebrated harbour improvement plans followed. His 1879 plan for the Melbourne Harbour Trust survives today in the State Library of Victoria.
The Yarra was progressively widened, deepened, and straightened. The Coode Canal would fundamentally alter the river's course.
And into this great period of maritime engineering sailed our second octopus.
The dredger called Octopus - A wooden-hulled dredger had been built in Melbourne in 1879 for Howard Smith's Shipping Company, with a Melbourne-built wooden hull by Robertson Brothers of Flinders Street and machinery manufactured in Belgium. It was subsequently sold to the Melbourne Harbour Trust for £1,700. Its dredging capacity was limited to about five metres, and it worked in dredging improving Melbourne's waterways.
When its intended work in Sydney did not proceed as planned, the vessel was sold to the Melbourne Harbour Trust. It was subsequently transferred to Geelong, where dredging was also vital to improving shipping access. It was sold in 1889 for work around Port Albert, continued working around the Gippsland ports there for another 15 years, and in 1903 was advertised for sale to be broken up.
The vessel itself appears to have disappeared into history.
But its name survives.
Two octopuses — two vastly different relationships with the seabed
There is something wonderfully Victorian about the coincidence.
The living octopus spends much of its life exploring the seabed, finding shelter, and manipulating its surroundings with eight extraordinarily capable arms.
The mechanical Octopus also worked along the bottom — digging, lifting, and reshaping the seabed so ships could reach Melbourne and regional Victorian ports.
One evolved over hundreds of millions of years.
Nineteenth-century Melbourne shipbuilders assembled the other.
One helped make its living from the marine environment.
The other helped Melbourne make a living from maritime trade.
Both belong to our maritime story.
And yes — “octopuses” is correct
World Octopus Day also allows us to settle one of seafood's favourite linguistic arguments.
The plural does not have to be “octopi.”
The word octopus comes originally from Greek rather than Latin, so applying the Latin-style “-i” ending is historically questionable.
Octopuses is perfectly correct English.
For those determined to display their classical credentials, forms derived from the Greek have also been used.
For the rest of us, octopuses will do nicely.
A seafood worth knowing
That is the real message for World Octopus Day.
Seafood becomes much more interesting when we know its story.
Know the species.
Know where it came from.
Know how it was caught.
Know something about the people and places behind it.
And occasionally, as with Victoria's Octopus, know a little of the maritime history that made getting seafood and other goods from the sea to our cities possible.
So, on 8 October, raise an imaginary eight-armed salute to one of the ocean's most extraordinary inhabitants.
And if you happen to be beside Melbourne's Yarra, spare a thought for another Octopus — the little nineteenth-century dredger that once worked beneath those waters helping to build the maritime city we know today.
Eight arms. Three hearts. Blue blood. And, in Victoria, one unexpected maritime history.
Happy World Octopus Day. 🐙
Seafood Consumers Association — helping consumers understand the seafood they buy, eat, and enjoy.
.jpg)
Comments
No comments yet.