Keferstein's Sea Cucumber

Keferstein's sea cucumbers are just so, so weird, so alien and sci-fi. I love them. It's totally mind-blowing how they change and move. When I picked this one up, it stretched out long and thin, almost two feet long, instantly vacuum tube-y, then shrank down again to a short smooth blob of about four inches. It kept contracting and unfurling, opening up from within, reaching out feather mouth tentacles, then drawing them back inside. Handling it, I couldn't stop shaking my head in amazement, in awed disbelief.

Also, they're sticky, but in a really weird way. They stick to your fingers, and even to their own bodies at times. But it's not in a normal sticky way. They have little sticky-bits ("hooklike spicules") on their skin that cling but are easy to pull away from. The walls of their bodies are so thin, it's like a sausage-casing with nothing but water inside. They're not slimy. Just soft. It seems like they'd be so easy to tear. It almost feels like nothing to touch them.

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• Keferstein's
• sea
• cucumber
• Polyplectana
• kefersteinii
• scuba
• shore
• dive
• underwater
• weird
• touch
• the
• South
• Kona
• Hawaii