My Octopus Teacher: review

By Ben (Discover English Teacher)

I wrote in an earlier piece that people could be split into two groups, depending on what pets they prefer – cat people and dog people – but I watched a film on Netflix recently that made me think again. My Octopus Teacher is about a guy named Craig Foster and his octopus friend! I’m pretty sure he is an octopus person!

He meets the female octopus on his daily diving expeditions in the kelp forest (an underwater forest of a very large type of seaweed called kelp) near his home off the coast of South Africa. He’s a cameraman by profession, and he decides to start filming the octopus every day. Craig becomes very close to her, and they even hug! It almost seems like a romantic relationship sometimes.

The octopus is super-intelligent and demonstrates some amazing behaviour, such as camouflaging herself (hiding by looking like her surroundings) with shells to avoid sharks and other predators (animals that eat other animals) that are constantly trying to eat her. Craig thinks that she is about as intelligent as a cat, which he thinks is incredible for what he describes as basically a mollusc (a shellfish or a big snail) without a shell. The octopus learns her incredible skills by herself, without being taught by a mother or father.

Craig speaks in a South African accent and uses some specialist ocean vocabulary, so you might need to slow down his speech and add subtitles to the film. See how here.

The film is connected to another project of Craig’s, the Sea Change Project, which aims to have the Great African Seaforest recognised as a global wilderness area that we should protect. To read more about the Sea Change Project check out https://seachangeproject.com/.

It’s an amazing film, beautifully shot, showing you an underwater world not often seen by people.

Are you a cat person, a dog person or an octopus person?