I'd like to be...under the sea...

     Tonight, after waiting for many years, we finally saw an animated octopus who was not malicious! Hank, the co-star of Finding Dory, is actually a septopus with an unexplained back story on the loss of his eighth limb (except that the incident was so horrific that he never wants to return to the sea. Which bugged me, as I know that octopus are great limb regenerators and very good at staying protected on the ocean floor (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/octopus-chronicles/how-octopus-arms-regenerate-with-ease/), and found it odd that they could spend two years creating the mechanics of bringing Hank to life with digital media, but couldn't write us a plausible back story for the missing leg.

     So I kept thinking about this inconsistency driving home with the kids in the car. They kept referencing Dory's loss of memory and her family. I kept thinking back to Nemo's loss of his mother and losing the full size of his fin. Perhaps the next movie will be Hank's story; how he came to be damaged, afraid, without family and an eighth leg. We'll already know that he learned to be brave and compassionate after meeting Dory and learning to trust his inner voice again.

     Only Octopus are solitary creatures for the most part, after they are born. The mother's ultimate sacrifice, after she lays her hundreds of eggs, is to wash water over them until they hatch, never leaving the cave or rock wall where she's hidden them, not even to eat. The longest documented case of an Octopus mother's love is 53 months of caring for her brood before she died. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/07/30/octopus-cares-for-her-eggs-for-53-months-then-dies/ That's what Octopus mother's do, at the ripe age of 2 or so, they mate, lay eggs, care for them until they start to hatch and then die.

     The kids and I were honored to see such a mother in action, as a captive in the Quebec Aquarium. (This is one photo from a series of 8 that I took). That mother was roughly 3 years old, but there was no male octopus to fertilize her eggs, so she was tending them and paying with her life, only the eggs would never hatch.  The wall of her tank was roughly 5'x4' and covered in eggs. She kept climbing up and down it, slowly, turning and washing water over the eggs. The woman who worked with this octopus told me that she'd been tending them for 2 weeks and might have another 2 weeks to live. I remarked on how pale the mother was and I remember the woman saying, "She's getting paler ever day."

     Most of the film was examining instinct, natural abilities and how that holds us together. But it also showed how the "crazy behavior" of being present in the moment, making choices based on passion and love can be just as valid as those which we are genetically programed to follow. Migration for the manta rays is just as valid as having chosen family that you risk your life to help and keep intact. Having a deficit (runty fin, no short term memory, a missing leg) isn't a reason for giving up or letting go, but rather the opposite; reasons to be resilient and resourceful.

     On one hand these two "Finding" films are more about finding yourself and believing in yourself, then they are about any external journey to find another who will make everything whole again. Dory still forgets, only she's learned how to thrive, not just survive; like Nemo before her. Hank seems to have accomplished all of this in one foul swoop (much like Dory did in Nemo; but in both the narrative was tracking the protagonists and the co-star was comic or cynical relief).

    I'm very tired now, and I know I'm going to have many additional thoughts in the morning, but I find it interesting that in Nemo, Dory had no parents or wasn't sure if she did, while in Dory, Hank makes no mention of family at all. The one thing they did emphasize about him however, which is true, is that he has three hearts (all octopus do). So I'm guessing that the third in what I'm assuming will be a trilogy, will be to discover that his family will become his students and the Nemo's and Dory's. Being of use and loved are the greatest ways to ride the planet, or navigate the oceans, after all!