Warty - Sea Cucumber

Scientific Name: Parastichopus parvimensis

Species: 

Other names: Warty - Sea Cucumber

Description

 The Warty sea cucumber has a cylindrical, highly contractile body, that can be black, brown, or red in color. The animals are covered above with elongate warts, and below with tube feet for locomotion and attachment to substrate. This imposes an almost bilaterally symmetrical pattern on these radially symmetrical animals. P. parvimensis is an epibenthic deposit-feeding holothurian. Members of the class holothuroiea are generally called sea cucumbers, though some of them bear no particular resemblance to the vegetable. Cucumbers may be flaccid when undisturbed, but when annoyed they become stiff and turgid, shorter in length, and thick. The body wall consists of a layer of circular muscles, connective tissue, and skin. The contraction of these circular and longitudinal muscle layers produces a worm like or peristaltic action.

This species creeps more rapidly than most cucumbers (about 1 m in 15 min.). Holothuroids differ from echinoderms, because they have a water vascular system full of body fluid rather than sea water. When annoyed, P. parvimensis spews out its internal anatomy in a kind of autonomy, a trait that has protective values. Within two to four weeks the viscera will regenerate. In the usual evisceration, the hind gut just inside the anus is ruptured by the pressure of water caused by a sudden contraction of body-wall muscles. This contraction voids first the respiratory trees and subsequently the remainder of the internal organs. The water-vascular system characteristic of echinoderms is manifest in the cucumbers tube feet used for locomotion and feeding. The tentacles around the mouth are actually modified tube feet. Like other echinoderms, cucumbers have a calcareous skeleton; but in their case it is only vestigial, composed of plates and spicules of lime buried in the skin and serving merely to stiffen the body wall.

Habitat: Sandy/Muddy substrates.
Depth range: 20 meters OR 66.6 feet
Maximum Length: Approximately 30cm.