MOVIE: Sea Cucumber

Wow nice video! They look like underwater caterpillars in all honesty.

lol, they sure don't FEEL like caterpillars! This one met it's end the instant a rock crab found it.

It looks like it would have pretty good defenses. How big was it?

It didn't have any defences from that! lol. It might taste bad or something, who knows. They live way down in the rocks and put up the bright, beautiful "flower" of a mouth to catch passing food particles. That one was, I think, 8-10 in when fully puffed.

To bad it didn't make it! It was cool looking.

California Sea Cucumbers(Parastichopus Californicus) are actually detritivores which feeds using their short tentacles to mop up that which has settled on the substrate. I can see how it could be confused with Cucumaria Miniata(Orange Sea Cucumber) which does trap drifting material with their bright orange and larger tentacles, as they do co-occur and Cucumaria are usually more difficult to extract as they do live stuck to and between or under rocks.

Thank-you, 4pacNW. I was mistaken. But this allowed me to understand that I have actually found both of these before. That one there was like under a rock while I have caught orange sea cucs before as well. Having seen THEM filtering with their large mouth pieces I thought this ate the same way.