At least 25 cephalopods were found ashore. It is possible that they "got lost" with direction due to recent storms.
When residents of the coastal town of New Key, Wales, saw dozens of octopuses methodically crawl ashore on a strange "pilgrimage" one night, they were completely stunned. At the same time, the octopuses were rather large, at least half a meter in length, and they stubbornly tried to get to the shore and crawled somewhere on the sand.
According to The Guardian, these attacks continued for three consecutive nights. After that, many of these molluscs were found dead on the sand of the beach. Brett Jones, who watches dolphins on his boat, was one of the witnesses to the strange behavior of octopuses.
“It was a bit like a movie about the End of the World,” he said in an interview with the BBC. “There were 20 or 25 of them crawling out to the beach. I've never seen anything like it before.
According to Brett, such creatures are generally extremely rare to see on land. In his opinion, the octopuses may have been frightened by the bright lights in New Key harbor and this confused them, or they were exhausted and injured after the recent violent storms and therefore could not resist the waves carrying them to the shore.
In another interview given to the Telegraph, Brett Jones said that in these places, octopuses usually hide in rocks at a depth of 2-3 meters and that he and others have tried to collect octopuses that crawled out to the beach and return them back to the water.
They picked up those who were already far from the water and lowered them into the water at the end of the pier. To all enthusiasts who wanted to help sentient beings, Brett gave warnings to "wear gloves, they bite great."
Promotional video:
However, their efforts were not enough to save all the molluscs.
The curator of the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth, James Wright, said that he was aware of two more similar episodes with octopuses in North Devon and in Wales, which happened last week.
“It was all pretty weird, and there was clearly something wrong with these animals,” Wright says.