Video 1 sounds like a lot of Pacific Loons out there. Sometimes they blend with the horizon line; they’re a large scattered flock, not always easy to see, and their voices carry wondrously.
Video 2, now that I can see it, shows, sure enough, the Pacific Loons mixed in with the Mergansers!
It's apparent now that they are the ones making those sounds.
In winter they look a lot like winter-plumaged Common Loons, but they're actually smaller. On the video we can see the silvery back of the neck on some of the adults.
A note about the Octopus narrative, from someone who has seen the other end.
Octopuses are caught for bait, yes. But they are immediately killed by severing their nerve cord at the base of the brain. The death is instant.
No fisher in his or her right mind would cut a couple of arms off an octopus and then throw it overboard - alive or dead. The post seems to imply that something like this has happened, and from what I’ve known so far, its extremely unlikely. The whole animal is used. They’re considered valuable, at least in the fishing community I worked in. Not killing it first would not only be cruel, it would also make it almost impossible to take any part of it; octopuses are really strong. So even the most unthinking bait-cutter you could imagine would have to kill it, and would not want to waste any part of it, if only to keep his or her job.
Halibut and lingcod prey on octopuses in the wild. Which is why they work so well as bait. Seals are their predators too. An octopus missing arms would have had encounters with a predator before it died, or with a scavenger after it died.
By the way, eagles occasionally tangle with octopuses - literally; trying to catch them in shallow water. It does not always go well for the eagle.
