Whenever the sun is shining, Rehan and his dad Ru put on their wetsuits and flippers and jump in the sparkling blue water at Perth's Mettams Pool.
It was on one of these underwater adventures that year five student Rehan fell hook, line and sinker for the West Australian common octopus because of its "weird skin" and eight tentacles.
With an interest in the WA common octopus, Rehan noticed the species was often hanging out with the brown-spotted wrasse fish.
So the pair spent the next year watching and recording what they saw across four different reefs in Perth.
What they discovered is known as nuclear-follower behaviour, which itself is not new, but Mr Somaweera, a behavioural ecologist, said it was not known among these two creatures.
Rehan discovered the brown-spotted wrasse follows the octopus around as it uses its tentacles to forage for food, making it easier for the fish to also score a feed.
With all the data the pair were collecting on their snorkeling trips, they wrote a scientific paper that has now been published in a CSIRO journal octopus_and_brown-spotted_wrasse.pdf.
