A SCUBA diver had a birthday to remember when she came face-to-face with an octopus in St Brelade’s Bay.
For Grace Bailey, who has been diving around the Jersey coast since 2017, it was a first-ever encounter with a marine creature that has been a relative rarity in Channel Island waters for more than 60 years.
“I’d always been dying to see an octopus, but never managed to,” Miss Bailey said. “It wasn’t something I’d planned that day, I was just out on a dive and drifting with the current when I went past a crevice and did a triple take.
“I’d looked several times to make sure, and managed to get my camera and get some good footage.”
Although she owns a specialist underwater camera, Miss Bailey used a GoPro 11 on this occasion, saying the smaller camera was sometimes easier and quicker to handle.
Miss Bailey is a part-time instructor based at the Bouley Bay Dive Centre, but had switched to the Island’s south coast for the birthday dive.
It is believed the creature she saw was a common octopus, albeit the label is no longer valid in this part of the world.
There were once millions of common octopuses living in Channel Islands waters, but the freezing winter of 1962/3 destroyed the population of the huge cephalopods, which can grow to up to three metres.
In recent years, divers and fishermen have reported occasional sightings of the much smaller curled octopus, and in 2022 an enormous 18lbs common octopus was caught – and released – by a visitor to the Island.
Grace Bailey posts photography on her Instagram page @gracebaileyphotos.
