Two miles below the waves off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, a team of geochemists in a subsea vehicle accidentally discovered hundreds of strange, beautiful purple octopus incubating their eggs. Deep sea biologists were stunned. "When I first saw the photos, I thought, 'They shouldn't be there! Not that deep and not that many of them!'" said Janet Voight, a zoologist at the Field Museum in Chicago.
Deep-sea octopuses usually live in far colder temperatures. Higher temperatures jump-start their metabolism, demanding more oxygen than the warm water provides. To brood eggs in warm water is usually suicide. The mysterious group of octopus mamas were ill fated indeed: of the 186 eggs attacked to the rocks underwater, none showed signs of a developing embryo. So what were the octopuses doing there?
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