SEATTLE - A Seattle diver captured Mother Nature at work in Seattle's Elliott Bay.
Earlier this week, a fellow scuba diver told Koos du Preez that a giant Pacific octopus had just died and her eggs were starting to hatch.
Du Preez happened to have his underwater HD video camera with him and jumped at the opportunity to tape the underwater scene.
"It was just thousands of them out there, and you could see it looks like fairy dust almost, when you sit down they are just everywhere around you. It's a pretty amazing sight," he said.
Du Preez explained that after the female octopus lays her eggs she will stay in her "den" for up to six months, protecting the eggs and fanning oxygenated water over them.
"She never wavers from her duty, she never stops, she never leaves and she never eats. She knows that if she even hesitates, the eggs will die," he said. "And then when the eggs start to hatch, she blows a final jet of water over them as she looks upon her offspring and then she dies."
Du Preez said of 100,000 eggs, only three to five babies will reach maturity and repeat the same cycle.
He said his experience was one of his saddest, yet happiest dives ever.
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