This week?s discovery of a deep sea octopus in Mangrove Bay thrilled local marine biologist, Dr. Wolfgang Sterrer, who described the find as ?spectacular?.

?I?ve never seen one of these before,? Dr. Sterrer said of the three-foot purple octopus which was first seen laying eggs in the shallow waters of Mangrove Bay last Thursday and then found dead later in the week.

Dr. Sterrer, a marine biologist and curator of the Natural History Museum at the Bermuda Aquarium Museum and Zoo (BAMZ), identified the creature as

?Which means the octopus with holes... So it?s a purple, holey octopus,? said a laughing Dr. Sterrer.

The octopus was easy to identify by the two pairs of holes at the top and the bottom of the invertebrate, which are believed to be used to pass water.

The specimen was just three feet in length but Dr. Sterrer said such octopuses have been known to grow to seven feet.

Interestingly, however, it is only the female of the species that grows to this large size while the males tend to be only roughly two inches in size.

?There are other dwarf males found in octopus and squid species, but this male is tiny, tiny,? Dr. Sterrer noted.

The male has one main arm which makes up most of its body and is used solely for transferring sperm to the female. The arm actually breaks off from the rest of the body after mating.

?In the olden days the arm was falsely described as a parasite to the female,? Dr. Sterrer said.

?This find is fantastic because there were two arms connected by a membranous web and when it swims it looks like a bat.?

When the creature was originally spotted it was laying eggs and Dr. Sterrer said the two male arms were also captured on film.

By the time BAMZ staff arrived at the spot, however, the animal had disappeared leaving the eggs and a substance like ?afterbirth? ? these were placed in an aquarium tank for observation.

Then on Saturday afternoon, BAMZ staffer Patrick Talbot, received a call that a dead octopus had washed up on the beach near Loyalty Inn.

It was collected and frozen for preservation.

Monday the eggs began hatching producing hundreds of larvae. is a reasonably common species in the depths of tropical and subtropical oceans, including the Sargasso Sea around Bermuda, Dr. Sterrer said, ?but it is rarely seen because it lives a few thousand feet or even metres down.?

In the winter months many invertebrates are believed to rise to the surface to spawn and later die either when they reach shallow water or after laying their eggs.

Bermuda has been the site of several other deep sea life findings including the giant squid held in the BAMZ?s collection.

?So little is known about these animals because they are usually dead and chewed up when they are found at the surface,? Dr. Sterrer said.

But technology is helping scientists learn more about these mysterious creatures of the deep.

?Some have been photographed by research submersibles which is interesting because we can then observe their behaviour,? Dr. Sterrer said.