Sea cucumbers have a secret superpower


The following is an excerpt from ADAPT by Amina Khan.


The sea cucumber is not exactly the beauty queen of the seas. Named for the long, tubular vegetable with a clean smell and a crisp flavor, the animal looks more like a pickle with an unmentionable skin disease. It crawls along the bottom of sandy floors; depending on the species, it can look like a ridged, knobbly, or even spiked giant sea slug. The animal has no brain—just a ring of nerves around its oral cavity that extend both to the tentacles around its mouth and also down the length of its body. It gobbles up the detritus that falls to the seafloor, extending long tendrils that are modified versions of the tube feet it shares with starfish. Depending on the species, these feeding tube feet can be gorgeous and ornate, like the branches in a tree or the delicate ends of a neuron.

These animals hold their feeding arms up to catch particles in the water, or they plow them into the sand and chow down, pooping out the clean sand that covers the seafloor. This trashy diet is probably what gives them that strong briny flavor that makes them a sought-after delicacy in places like China and Korea.


Sea cucumbers are bottom-feeders, a term that’s used unflatteringly to describe certain types of people: ambulance chasers, paparazzi, payday lenders. But that’s an insult to literal bottom-feeders everywhere. It’s true that sea cucumbers eat dead and discarded matter, from carcasses to excrement. But that’s not a bad thing—in fact, it’s a crucial cleaning service for the world’s oceans. Sea cucumbers clean all that crap out of the water and off of the substrate, and then poop out nice, “clean” sandy substrate. They’re the earthworms of the sea in that way, recycling decomposing matter and aerating the seafloor.


Read More at:
https://www.popsci.com/animals-deep-sea-fisherman-in-russia-tweeting-are-weird-looking

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