Casper (octopus species)

The Casper octopus, also called the ghost octopus, is an informally named deep-sea octopus known so far mainly from imagery rather than from an examined specimen, so its taxonomic identity remains unresolved. It was first observed in waters off Hawaii in 2016, and similar animals have since been reported off the coast of Ecuador and along the Nazca Ridge. Scientific literature calls it the Casper morphotype. The animal has very little musculature and an almost gelatinous body, short arms and a single series of suckers, and it lacks chromatophores, which leaves it partly translucent and gave it the name of the cartoon ghost Casper. As an incirrate octopod it lacks the fins of cirrate octopods such as Grimpoteuthis. A sighting at Necker Ridges in the Hawaiian Archipelago at a depth of 4,290 metres was described as the deepest recorded sighting of an incirrate octopod. In a survey of the Peru Basin, two incirrate octopods were seen brooding clutches of about 30 eggs attached to dead sponge stalks on manganese nodules, and nodule mining may cause habitat loss for these octopods.