Group of octopus invade beach in Wales

NEW QUAY, Wales — Brett Stones had never seen anything like it.

About 25 curled octopuses crawled out of the water and were walking along the beach in New Quay.

"It was a bit like an end-of-days scenario," Stones, 39 who owns SeaMor Dolphin Watching Boat Trips, told BBC. "There were probably about 20 or 25 (octopuses) on the beach. I have never seen them out of the water like that."

This isn’t the first sighting of the cephalopods on land, either. Residents said they saw the curled octopuses, usually found deep below the water, three consecutive nights on land.

"They usually hide in the rocks some two or three meters below the surface," Stones told the Telegraph. "We've tried to put them back in the sea where we can, but we have found a few dead ones on the beach in the mornings, which suggests they may have got confused and stranded."

Officials can only speculate as to why the octopuses appeared on land. The area was hit by storms Ophelia and Brian earlier in the month, according to the Telegraph.

"This account of a number on the same beach is quite odd," James Wright, curator at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth, told the Telegraph. "But them even being found in the intertidal is not common and suggests there is something wrong with them, I am afraid. As the areas where they are exhibiting this odd behavior coincides with the two areas hit by the two recent low pressure depressions and associated storms of Ophelia and Brian, it could be supposed that these have affected them. It could simply be injuries sustained by the rough weather itself, or there could be a sensitivity to a change in atmospheric pressure."

Whatever the reason for them coming ashore, Stones knows it’s an exceptional sight.

“It is really rare to see them,” he said.

Cox Media Group