I came back to Madrona Point on Sept. 17, 2023. Visibility in the shallows near shore was only a few feet from stirred-up bits of seaweed. Farther out it started to gradually clear, but it was still much less than I was expecting. I didn't take many pictures during the swim out to the wall because of this reduced visibility.
In the shallows, there were lots of orange finger sponges ("dead man's fingers", we used to call them. I don't know what the common name is now). I don't remember seeing them here years ago.
I reached the deeper wall. Visibility out here was pretty good, maybe 40-50', but it was darker than usual because of the murky surface layer. Some of these pictures are tripod-steadied, 1/4-second exposures, which makes them look brighter than it actually was.
I saw a shape move below me. It was a semi-large octopus that had left its den and decided to hang around in the open. It was surrounded by the usual octopus fan club of rockfish.
I set up my cameras on a tripod on the sandy bottom to get one of my narcissistic self-portrait shots with the octopus, but it swam off the wall and enveloped my camera, knocking it over onto the sand. I picked up the camera and the octopus moved down to the tripod legs and rode around on them for awhile before finally letting go. It seemed surprisingly heavy when I was carrying it around.
The octopus climbed back onto the wall. I set up my tripod again and it shot out its arms and pulled itself onto my camera again. This has happened before a few times over the years when I have tried to take pictures of an octopus out in the open. I dive with 2 cameras bolted together, and the octopus always go for the one with the big dome port. I assume this behavior has something to do with seeing their reflection in the dome port. I wouldn't call it attacking since they don't bite with their beaks or try to pry things apart with their arms. Maybe they start out feeling aggressive towards what they think is another octopus, but when they make contact with it (their reflection), it doesn't feel or taste like what they expected. Whatever the reason, today this octopus did this 3 times and rode around on my camera as I tried to hold it close to the rocks to allow it to climb off if it wanted (which it eventually always did).
I had planned to do a tour of the entire wall, including checking up on the small cloud sponge at its deeper end, but I ended up spending all my time with the octopus (mostly trying to encourage it to let go of my cameras). Because of the deeper depths (just over 90'), I had used up my limited time and had to swim back towards shore.
