I just visited the octopus in this story two days before this happened. Tomorrow I'll go back and see what's become of the thousands of eggs it was protecting (they'll probably be eaten by predators, if they haven't been already).
Cove 2 is one of the most amazing dive sites in the world (take my word for it). After a half dozen years of there not being many octos sighted there, the population started to rebound.
As an animal with a short lifespan that produces thousands of offspring with individually very low survival rates, losing even one nesting Giant Pacific Octopus in the middle of its reproductive cycle is a great loss, and can change the trajectory of the overall population in a small area like this cove.
I hope that something good can come of this, eventually.
