17 April 2023 , 20:37
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An enormous octopus was found washed up on a UK beach by a dad ad daughter on a fishing trip.
Ziggy Austin was fishing at Hope's Nose along the Torquay coast in Devon when he and his daughter Lauren spotted something out of the ordinary.
Ziggy spoke of his shock after stumbling on the monster creature having initially mistaking it for a 'wrecked fishing net'.
He said: "It was very unusual. I was stood on the edge of Hope's Nose looking down over the side and I could see something that looked like a kind of wrecked fishing net. And I thought 'That's weird what is that?'
"Then a big wave came in and moved it and it rolled over and I saw these tentacles. And I was like 'Oh my fricking god! It's an octopus.'
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"So I got down on the side of the rocks, de-rigged my rod and used the end of my rods to reach it to kind of snag it and dragged it up.
"Then Lauren managed to get hold of one of its tentacles and dragged it up onto the rocks. It was something very unusual."
Ziggy spoke of his shock after stumbling on the monster creature having initially mistaking it for a 'wrecked fishing net (Rock Solid Coasteering/Facebook)
The octopus laid out to be measures (Rock Solid Coasteering/Facebook)As a scuba diver and the owner of Rock Solid Coasteering, a company that leads local coastal adventures, Ziggy has seen a lot of coastal wildlife. He believes the octopus he found is a common octopus, reports DevonLive.
This type of octopus is generally about 12-36 inches big (30cm - 91cm), according to National Geographic, but Ziggy thinks the one he found was more like two metres across.
He said: "This thing is much bigger than a metre, I think it's almost two metres, it's absolutely huge. I haven't measured it yet which is why I want to take it home and measure it officially because it might be the biggest one ever seen.
"Normally you see them and they're like the size of your fist, a couple of feet across, if that."
The octopus was sadly already dead when Ziggy found it. He said he believes it was eaten by a seal that regularly visits and steals fish off of fishermen's lines.
He said: "It was dead but it was still kind of twitching, so it was really fresh. The seal must have bitten its head off. The brain would have been huge."
The family measuring the huge octopus (Rock Solid Coasteering/Facebook)Ziggy said he estimated the octopus to weigh about 10kg, but would weigh it properly once he got home.
As a science teacher who has always been interested in marine biology, Ziggy is thinking of dissecting the octopus on a Facebook Live stream on Rock Solid Coasteering's Facebook, if his wife allows him to use the kitchen, that is.
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He also said that he might take the octopus into class to show his students the amazing specimen.
He plans to make a YouTube video about the animal too on his channel.
Ziggy said he has plans for cooking up the octopus too. He said: "I won the Torquay edition of Come Dine With Me a few years back so I'll cook something special with this beautiful specimen."
He added: "I would never kill such an amazing creature, but I don't want it to go to waste. All my friends are already messaging for a piece."
The find amazed other people who were fishing at No Hopes Head at the time too. Ziggy said: "You get a lot of guys down there fishing and they were coming up to me saying 'What the hell', gathering around, taking photographs, giving me advice on how to cook it.
"There were lots of Thai and Chinese people there and they all had a different recipe for me."