Family rescue octopus from North Wales beach with dog lead

Idris Lumb, 10, was with his dad, Lee on the beach in Llandudno when they came across an unusual shape on the beach and discovered an octopus which still appeared to be alive.

The trip had been part of a day out for their new dog Pebbles with mum Marie and Idris’ little sister Arianwen, seven - but instead of introducing their pup to the beach they found themselves trying to work out how to rescue the stricken sea creature.

“I was skimming stones with my dad and I saw something, I thought it might have been a rock,” said Idris.

“I went over to it and realised it was an octopus and I called my dad over. We didn’t know if it was dead or alive.

"Then we saw it kind of breathing so we knew it was alive and we were trying to get it back into the sea.”

The Octopus was clearly in danger with the tide going out and being surrounded by seagulls.

“Pebbles was just trying to keep seagulls at bay right then”, added Idris.

This led to mum, Marie, coming up with an unusual solution.

“None of us were keen on picking it up as we weren’t sure if it would hurt us. We didn’t really have anything to pick it up as we’d only just arrived in hiking boots,” said Marie. “The only thing we had was an extendable dog lead.

“We tried to put the dog lead gently under the octopus and it started to crawl on it. Because we couldn’t walk into the sea with as we had only just arrived and it doesn’t sound very nice but we had to throw the handle as far out as we could into the sea.

“It won’t have harmed him as he doesn’t have any bones.

“After we chucked him we saw he came off the dog lead and swam out into the sea. So hopefully it was a successful rescue.”

Since the rescue the family have christened the rescued octopus Boris – although not after the former Prime Minister.

Idris has found out that it was probably a horned or curled Octopus, which is native to “the northeast Atlantic, ranging from Norway to the Mediterranean, including the British Isles.”

However the family have also found that such findings are very rare.

“I talked to someone from Llandudno who had been living there 40 years and they had never seen an octopus on the beach,” added Marie.

“I think it is quite a rare site to see a live octopus on the beach.

“Most people who have said they have seen an octopus in British waters have said they usually have to be scuba diving.”