shellfish · The Trophy Room
Giant California Sea Cucumber
The strangest harvest in the field book — a soft, warty, red-orange sausage that crawls the seafloor eating mud for a living. The giant California sea cucumber is a genuine delicacy across the Pacific, where the long muscle strips are prized, and it's one of the odder animals you'll ever hold.
Identifying
- soft cylindrical body, reddish-brown to orange, studded with soft conical papillae (the "warts")
- a ring of feeding tentacles at the mouth end that sweep detritus off the bottom
- can reach a foot and a half long; body wall firm but pliable
- an echinoderm — despite the name and shape, kin to urchins and sea stars, not a vegetable and not a shellfish
Facts
- when threatened it can eviscerate — expelling its own gut to distract a predator, then regrowing it
- the five long inner muscle strips are the prized eating; the rest of the body wall is used too
- a seafloor recycler, processing sediment the way an earthworm processes soil — dive-harvested under strict quota
