One summer day off the northern coast of New Zealand, Rochelle Constantine noticed something strange on the water’s surface. The dorsal fin slicing through the Hauraki Gulf belonged to a shortfin mako—the world’s fastest shark. But something was… off. Its head bore a large orange smear.
“At first, I was like, ‘Is it a buoy? Is it entangled in fishing gear or had a big bite?’” Constantine, a marine ecologist at the University of Auckland, told The New York Times. “We launched the drone, put the GoPro in the water and saw something unforgettable: an octopus perched atop the shark’s head, clinging on with its tentacles,” she recalled.
It was, as she and her team later realized, the first recorded sighting of what the internet has gleefully dubbed the “sharktopus.”
A Wild Ride
The octopus in question was no lightweight. It was a Māori octopus, the largest octopus species in the Southern Hemisphere. Powerful, fast, and intelligent, these cephalopods usually dwell on the seabed, far below the hunting zones of mako sharks.
The mako is all about speed. It can hit 50 kilometers per hour (about 31 mph) in open water and sometimes leap clean out of the sea. It is sleek, predatory, but also endangered.
Yet, for at least ten minutes on that December day in 2023, these two animals shared a ride.
“The shark seemed quite happy, and the octopus seemed quite happy,” Constantine told The New York Times. “It was a very calm scene.”
But no one knows how it began—or ended. After ten minutes, the researchers moved on, unsure whether the octopus eventually let go, got eaten, or rode the mako into deeper waters.
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“It is almost impossible to speculate how, or why, this shark and octopus might have come together or what the nature of their connection might be,” said Abigail McQuatters-Gollop, a marine conservation ecologist at the University of Plymouth, who was not involved in the discovery. “But does that matter?”
You Have Been Visited by the ‘Sharktopus of Peace’
The footage was taken while the team from the University of Auckland was scanning for “workups,” oceanic feeding frenzies where predator and prey churn the water into a frenzy. What they found instead was something peaceful—and profoundly strange.
Shark and octopus encounters are rare. The mako shark rarely swims near the seabed, while octopuses prefer to hug the ocean floor. Seeing one riding the other defies expectations.
“You can see it takes a fair amount of real estate on the shark’s head,” Constantine said. She suspects that once the mako picked up speed, the octopus might not have held on for long. “The octopus may have been in for quite the experience.”
And yet, for a brief moment in time, the “sharktopus” existed—unbothered, moisturized, in its lane.
“The ‘sharktopus’ encounter is a reminder of the wonders of the ocean. One of the best things about being a marine scientist is that you never know what you might see next in the sea. By supporting conservation initiatives, we can help to ensure that such extraordinary moments keep happening.”
