Young boy finds a deadly blue-ringed octopus at a popular family swimming spot – as Australians are warned to keep an eye out for the terrifying creatures this summer
- Deadly blue-ringed octopus seen at ocean pool at Coogee Beach Friday morning
- Randwick City lifeguards were alerted to spotting but couldn’t find the animal
- The ocean pool was closed for several hours as lifeguards drained the water out
- Lifeguards reopened the pool on Friday afternoon after the creature wasn’t seen
A deadly blue-ringed octopus has been discovered by a little boy at a popular family swimming spot – as Australians are warned to keep an eye out for the terrifying creatures this summer.
A member of the public found the deadly animal on Friday morning in the Ross Jones Memorial Pool at Coogee Beach in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and shared an image to Instagram.
The picture captioned ‘deadly but beautiful’ showed the creature floating in the ocean pool amongst the seaweed.
The blue-ringed octopus was spotted in the Ross Jones Memorial ocean pool at Sydney’s Coogee Beach on Friday morning
The mother of the young boy who noticed the octopus told Yahoo News Australia that he ran to inform Randwick City lifeguards at the beach as she watched the octopus in the pool.
A Randwick City Council spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia that lifeguards responded to the public’s sighting but they were unsuccessful in finding the octopus as there was a lot of seaweed in the pool at the time.
‘The lifeguards took a precautionary approach to respond to the concerns people had, so what they decided to do was to drain the pool – it’s a tidal pool there so they can drain it – and they had it closed for a few hours,’ they said.
The pool was confirmed to have reopened later on Friday afternoon as the octopus was never found or seen again.
Blue-ringed octopuses are the most common at Sydney’s beaches but are often very difficult to spot as they are normally shy, camouflage well and try to hide.
Individuals should keep a lookout for the hard-to-find deadly creatures this summer at popular sandy shores in Sydney.
Randwick City lifeguards closed the ocean pool for several hours to drain the water out to locate the octopus but it was later reopened on Friday afternoon after no animal sightings