Common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) — spearfishing in Morocco

01 Telling it apart

Eight arms of roughly equal length with two rows of suckers each, a bag-shaped body with no fins, and skin that changes colour and texture in an instant. At rest in a den it is mottled brown and knobbly and matches the rock; alarmed it flashes pale or dark red.

You rarely see the animal first. You see the den: a hole or the underside of a boulder with a clean scatter of empty shells, crab carapaces and small stones in front of the entrance, sometimes with a stone pulled across it.

An eye in the entrance, a single arm tip, or the pale rim of the siphon is usually all that shows.

02 Habitat

Dens: holes, cracks, the space under boulders, bottles and tyres, on rock and on mixed bottom near rock, from the first metre down. It moves den every few days and hunts at night and at dusk for crabs, bivalves and fish.

The rubbish tells the story: a doorstep of shells and crab shells means a den in use.

Sand and mud flats near rock hold it too, dug in under a stone.

03 Where to find it in Morocco

The whole coast. The Moroccan Atlantic octopus fishery, centred on Dakhla and the south, is one of the largest in the world, which is why the species is the most regulated on this site and why its closures are set by the fisheries institute every year.

Density on a given rock changes with the season and with the last closure.

04 Spawning

Once. The female lays strings of eggs in her den, guards and aerates them for a month or more without feeding, and dies when they hatch. The male dies not long after mating.

A female guarding eggs is not taken. It ends both her life and the whole clutch at once, for a few hundred grams of meat.

05 Behaviour

It stays put for a few days and then moves. Its camouflage is superb and it is found by its den far more often than by its shape.

Disturbed, it inks and jets away, then hides again within a few metres. Cornered in a den it holds on with a strength that surprises everyone the first time.

It is intelligent and curious: a still diver is sometimes touched by an arm tip from a den.

How you approach it

Look for the den, not the animal: empty shells, crab carapaces and arranged stones in front of a crack.
Take it by hand, not with a shaft. A gloved hand at the head, pulled straight out, is cleaner and lets a small one go back.
Weigh it honestly. The legal minimum is a weight, and a 300 g octopus is a fraction of what it will be in three months.
Leave any female with eggs in the den. She dies after they hatch anyway; taking her ends the clutch too.
Dispatch it immediately and properly. An octopus in a bag is alive and climbing out.

What people get wrong

01 That an octopus lives for years. It lives twelve to eighteen months; every animal on the rock is under two years old.
02 That a small one is a young one that will grow. It will, threefold in a season, which is the reason for the weight limit.
03 That the closures are always the same dates. They are set each year by the fisheries institute and they move.

Do not confuse it with

The species this one is taken for, and what tells them apart.

Horned octopus, Eledone moschata — a single row of suckers on each arm and a strong musky smell; smaller, on mud and sand rather than rock.
Cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis — a flat oval body with a fin all round it and only two long tentacles; on sand, not in a den.