Gerringong native Scott Gutterson had been tracking Roxy the octopus for some time. 

Then, in late March, his mum came over for a visit from Western Australia, and they went down to the Kiama Rockpool. Gutterson and his daughter were taking photos underwater, when he saw her in the little hole where she would stay her whole life.

“That’s why I named her Roxy, it seemed like an appropriate name for an octopus in a rock pool,” he recalls. 

Little did Gutterson, who’s an Emergency Medical Services captain by profession, know that he would come to have the most amazing experience with this creature of the sea.

The bluest of blues

A fully grown octopus tetricus, more commonly known as the “gloomy octopus,” Roxy measured one to two metres across, from tentacle to tentacle. (Each tentacle was 45-60 centimetres long.) 

Octopuses, which belong to the cephalopods, have the ability to change both the pattern and colour of their skin.

Gutterson recalls going into the rock pool one night, seeing this intense blue ring around her eye and simply being in awe. “It was captivating,” he says.

Popping in for a visit every other day, he’s not entirely sure how he discovered that tapping on a rock nearby would catch Roxy’s attention.

“They [octopi] are curious and highly intelligent. With their tentacles, they can taste, touch and smell,” explains Gutterson.

“She would wrap one tentacle and then another around my two fingers, and pull. I would gently squeeze them.”

Gradually, the octopus became more and more comfortable with him.

“Obviously, she thought ‘I recognise this guy. The one with the beard. I’ve spent some time with him and he’s not a threat.’ ”

Gutterson encouraged his wife Kellie, who’s also a diver, to go down in the rock pool and interact with Roxy. But the octopus, too shy, wouldn’t come out of her hole.

Becoming a mum

Initially though, Gutterson didn’t realise that Roxy was pregnant until he noticed white pieces of string, “literally white strings hanging behind her.”

He observed her looking after her eggs, and after having them, she never left her home.

“She always kept a tentacle attached to the roof or one body part left in the hole,” he says.

Roxy was now a mum, looking after her kids. But it wasn’t all swell in the rock pool. A blue-ringed octopus, known to be venomous, had been spotted, sitting on top of one of the ladders. A post about the visitor on the Kiama Community Facebook page caused quite the stir.

“They wanted to drain the rock pool. If they did, it would have killed Roxy and her babies,” says Gutterson. 

He admits actually going looking for it, only to take a photo - not to interact with, he’s quick to point out. In his experience, these very small octopi, ten centimetres across at best, tend to shy away from people. “Boom – and they’re out of there,” Gutterson says.

The Roxy movement

Every day, Gutterson swims with the Werri Point Swimmers, south of Gerringong, and spotting octopi has become something of a thing. He refers to it as, “the Roxy syndrome or the Roxy movement.”

Just the other day, he says with a laugh, “a friend of mine said, ‘can we go looking for octopus?’ “ 

Because, as it turns out, there’s plenty of them around. Gutterson says that the natural rock pools provide a safe environment for them.

An octopus they’ve nicknamed “Thorpe,” because of the speed with which it moves, saw Gutterson and his friend on the other side of the pool.

“It travelled 60 metres across, and through all this weed, to say ‘G’day!’ “ he says, impressed. 

“That’s what I love about them, they’ll come out and have an interaction.”

Because although Roxy sadly is no longer around, adult octopi generally only live two to three more weeks after laying their eggs, her legacy in and around the local rock pools where much lives on.