The sand and rubble around South Florida’s Blue Heron Bridge is legendary for its diverse congregations of marine life, from seahorses and stargazers to pike blennies and octopuses. For Dr. Chelsea Bennice, it’s the octopuses that have kept her coming back to the site for more than a decade. As a research fellow at the Florida Atlantic University (FAU) Marine Science Laboratory, she specializes in octopus research, and among the dive community at the bridge, she’s known as “Octo-Girl.”

Bennice got her open-water certification while teaching marine science at Seacamp on Big Pine Key, shortly after finishing her undergraduate degree. She got her introduction to cephalopods—squids, cuttlefishes and octopuses — as a research assistant at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Read rest of the article here.

Source: What It's Like to Be an Octopus Researcher | Scuba Diving