Seasoned diver Jules Casey assumed the enormous octopus was merely curious about her when he stretched out a long tentacle and wrapped it around her hand.
But when he began swimming away, leading her alongside him, she was the one who was intrigued.
Where were they going?
“He would swim a little way, then stop and turn around to look at me, almost as though he was making sure I was still following,” Ms. Casey said.
“It felt like he was coaxing me along, so I thought, OK – I’ll follow along and see what happens.”
After several minutes of swimming together through the icy waters off the Mornington Peninsula, the unlikely new friends arrived at their destination.
Ms. Casey had been led to an eerie and secret shrine on the ocean floor.
“It’s this block, like a headstone,” she said.
“I was amazed. It was very cool and pretty special.”
The shrine features a photograph of a man holding a fluffy white dog and bears a plaque with the name ‘Lorenz’.
Her new octopus friend hovered around, clutching onto it, seemingly celebrating that he’d been able to guide Ms. Casey to it.
The incredible encounter gave her the answer to a mystery she’d been searching for since discovering several submerged garden statues, secured to the ocean floor with metal pickets.
“I’d gone out further than I normally would and the first thing I noticed were these metal star pickets in the ground,” she said.
“Then I saw the statues. I thought, ah, someone is building an artificial reef.”
Over the few weeks on subsequent dives, more stakes and PVC pipes had also appeared as well, each about five meters apart.
Together with the figurines, they formed a large loop.
“The whole artificial reef thing is a little bit naughty because Fisheries and the like wouldn’t be happy,” she explained.
“But any kind of object underwater allows for soft corals and plants to grow into a kind of artificial reef, which brings life. It creates a little ecosystem.”
“Our bay is predominantly sand based, so you can swim for miles and miles and just find grass and sand. Any time there’s a rocky structure or a pier or, like this, an artificial reef, it’ll attract life.”
The headstone the octopus took her to is the final piece of the special submerged puzzle.
But what about the PVC piping captured in her video?
“Octopus like to hide in them,” she explained.
Ms. Casey has been diving for many years, both freediving and scuba, and is out in the water virtually every single day – even in the depth of winter.
“That’s when all the good stuff happens,” she said.
“It’s all about just having the right gear because I used to hate that shock of cold water when you first jumped in, but I have a freediver’s wetsuit. It’s a little bit different so we don’t get that cold rush. It makes it so much more bearable for me.”
The diving community in her neck of the woods is a tight knit one.
Recently, while at a local dive shop, she got chatting to a man and mentioned the incredible experience with her octopus tour guide.
“It was the person who made the reef,” Ms. Casey said.
“I couldn’t believe it. But he showed me a little map he’d drawn of the structures in a loop for his friend Lorenz who’d passed away.”
Totally by chance, Ms. Casey had discovered Lorenz’s loop – with the help of the octopus.
It’s the kind of magical moments that are waiting to be found underwater.
“It’s such another world down there,” she said.
“When you immerse yourself in that environment and it invites you in like this, it’s incredible. It’s so addictive.”
She has encountered the same animal in the past while diving, but these days he has a few white patches and has lost the tips of some of his tentacles.
Those physical changes indicate that he has been mating and is perhaps nearing the end of his life.
Close encounters like those aren’t unusual, she said.
“They’re very curious and, and I find more often it happens around their mating season. They’ll reach out and they’ll touch you. They do spend quite a bit of time like exploring your camera.”
“They’re amazing creatures. It’s so cool when one of them wants to come and explore you.”
The octopus is famed for its incredible intelligence and innate curiosity.
Maori Octopus is one of the largest and most robust species found around Australia’s south and, of course, its native New Zealand.
They’re dark red with speckled white skin and have long, uneven tentacles – the longest of which can stretch three metres long.
