NOAA Ocean Exploration, Gulf of Mexico 2012. Download (mp4, 19.1 MB).
This octopus was seen floating just above the seafloor at a depth of 1,125 meters (3,690 feet) during a 2012 dive in the Gulf of Mexico, northwest of northwest of Tampa, Florida. On this particular dive, in the midst of an expansive bed of chemosynthetic mussels, scientists were able to find an active gas seep that had been imaged earlier using the ship's multibeam system. This discovery verified the use of high-resolution multibeam as a viable tool for locating gas seeps and added another exploration tool to our arsenal.