So she drops in weight, and she loses an enormous amount of strength.

The eggs are laid right in the back, in the dark.

It's impossible to see them.

I just keep going every day and just check.

She's oxygenating the eggs with her siphon, looking after them.

She's just slowly dying

and timing her death exactly for the hatching of those eggs.

I mean, it struck home so hard for me.

Here's an invertebrate, essentially a mollusk,

sacrificing her own life

for her young.

All those eggs hatched.

They're tiny, and they go into the water column.

Hundreds of thousands of them.

And the next thing I saw, she's washed out the den, barely alive.

[gentle, moving music playing]

And the fish, you know, feeding on her.

A lot of the scavengers coming to feed on her.

It was just heartbreaking.

A part of me just wanted to hold her and chase them away.