I wonder if people prefer this style of writing ? I feel like I've read 2-3 paragraphs worth of data and a few quotes buerried in wordstream on authors feelings and impressions.
The rhetorical method we like to call "science writing" is a particularly useful way to help a non-expert reader understand a new topic. You tell a story around a scientific topic and the reader can both engage with an otherwise foreign topic and gain a greater appreciation / knowledge of it.
In this case... the author wants to help the reader understand that these animals are intelligent. He personifies them through a series of anecdotes and approaches encounters from an octopus-first perspective, to help the reader "get in the headspace" of the various octopuses.
This passage stuck out to me and I had to include it:
> Perhaps I had understood something basic about what it felt like to be Athena at that moment: she was hungry. I handed a fish to one of her larger suckers, and she began to move it toward her mouth. But soon she brought more arms to the task, and covered the fish with many suckers — as if she were licking her fingers, savoring the meal.
A lot of people are now in their own bodies as well as Athena the Octopus', thinking about food they love to eat.
In the end, many readers will come away feeling like, in a little way, they "were" the octopus, and appreciating them more.
Maybe you could try to see the author's feelings and impressions as a kind of data? Very subjective data, and less clear and rigorous, but not worthless.
A lot of what the author is trying to convey is not factual, but perspective. "I learned and experienced some things, and it changed how I see the world."
Maybe I'm too used to reading technical stuff :/