Marc's Blog: hawaii - Bitten by a Starry Night Octopus in Kauai Night Dive

I planned a few night dives in Kauai, and quickly found a beautiful starry night octopus:

we went to see if it wanted to be friendly (divemaster hand in that picture)

I let it climb on my hand (I did not grab it, it just climbed calmly). But what happened is that while it was on me, it decided I tasted good and cut my hand open to try and start to eat me. It was pretty clear what happened, so I passed the octopus to the dive guide and other divers pet it, not knowing what happened (I never pet octopus, not sure if they like it, but I love to touch their suckers which they use to smell you and decide what you are):

from here it all looks ok outside of potentially questionable petting that was done by others

it was calm and friendly and happily climbed on other people's hands after mine

It used its beak to cut my finger open and injected me with its poison meant to paralyse preys. And yes, it did hurt:

doesn't quite show but the finger was much bigger due to inflammation

way too many hours waiting in a small ER in the middle of a sunday night to clean the wound

In the end, the ER folks were pretty inept and thought I still had a piece of beak in my hand:

But it turns out the dot is actually on the correct finger but wrong part of it (off by one knuckle), after going to a proper medical facility at home, they confirmed I had nothing left in my hand. However, I had to take antibiotics for almost a month as I had persistent tingling and "this is not right" feelings in that hand for almost a month. While that octopus thankfully did not have venom that was fatal to humans, whatever it injected me still made my body unhappy for quite a while. I did contact DAN at the time and there is very little info on octopus poison effect on humans outside of the blue ring octopus which is known to be fatal. I guess this is one entry for the database that it's not fatal, but definitely has toxins and causes issues for up to a month after the bite (I used doxycycline 200mg daily for about 2 weeks to help clear the infection).

So while I did not tease or poke the octopus, but it was hunting for food, and after being curious about me, it decided that I could be food after it climbed on my arm to explore (yes, I did let it, it's usually fine and safe). So there you go, beware about octopus contact when they are feeding, especially if your hand smells good to them :)