The California sea cucumber (''Apostichopus californicus''), also known as the giant California sea cucumber, is a

sea cucumber Sea cucumbers are echinoderms from the class Holothuroidea (). They are marine animals with a leathery skin and an elongated body containing a single, branched gonad. Sea cucumbers are found on the sea floor worldwide. The number of holothuria ...

that can be found from the

Gulf of Alaska The Gulf of Alaska (Tlingit: ''Yéil T'ooch’'') is an arm of the Pacific Ocean defined by the curve of the southern coast of Alaska, stretching from the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island in the west to the Alexander Archipelago in the east, ...

Baja California Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...

. It is found from the low

intertidal zone The intertidal zone, also known as the foreshore, is the area above water level at low tide and underwater at high tide (in other words, the area within the tidal range). This area can include several types of habitats with various species o ...

to a depth of . They are most abundant in areas with moderate current with cobbles, boulders or bedrock. They are artisanally fished.

Description

The California sea cucumber can grow to a length of and a width of . It has a soft, cylindrical body, with red-brown to yellowish leathery skin. It has an

endoskeleton An endoskeleton (From Greek ἔνδον, éndon = "within", "inner" + σκελετός, skeletos = "skeleton") is an internal support structure of an animal, composed of mineralized tissue. Overview An endoskeleton is a skeleton that is on the i ...

just below the skin. The mouth and anus are on opposite ends of the body. The mouth is surrounded by twenty retractable

tentacle In zoology, a tentacle is a flexible, mobile, and elongated organ present in some species of animals, most of them invertebrates. In animal anatomy, tentacles usually occur in one or more pairs. Anatomically, the tentacles of animals work main ...

s that are used to bring food in. Five rows of

tube feet Tube feet (technically podia) are small active tubular projections on the oral face of an echinoderm, whether the arms of a starfish, or the undersides of sea urchins, sand dollars and sea cucumbers; they are more discreet though present on britt ...

extend from the mouth to the anus. They use their tube feet located on the underside of their body to attach themselves to rocks.

Feeding

The California sea cucumber is a scavenger that feeds on organic matter. They feed by sifting through sediments with their tentacles, or by positioning themselves in a current where they can use their tentacles to catch food flowing by.

Behavior and reproduction

''A. californicus'' is a solitary nocturnal animal. When threatened, it can eviscerate, expelling its organs through its anus. It can also expel sticky filaments to ensnare or confuse predators. These sea cucumbers have separate sexes, and

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...

s are fertilized externally. Spawning usually takes place in August, and each female can produce thousands of eggs. After fertilization, a larva is formed which metamorphoses into a sea cucumber after a few weeks.

References

*Benton, William, et al. Britannica Macropaedia. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc, 1976. *Stichpus californicus. NWMarineLife.com, Olympia, Washington

External links

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q2491427 Stichopodidae Animals described in 1857 Taxa named by William Stimpson Taxobox binomials not recognized by IUCN