Jan 20, 2009: Glimpse Inside a Sea Cucumber

Tideflat Critters

Interesting fact: sea cucumber guts resemble angel hair spaghetti. Sea cucumbers expel their intestines through their anus when stressed (please read our earlier post about the process here). We haven't harvested any cucumbers from our beach in decades, but gave in to culinary curiosity one day last spring.

One self-eviscerated sea cucumber and one clammed-up moon snail in a very yellow bucket:

sea-cucumber-guts

 

We have no idea what this is... but it came out of the cucumber:

bulbous-thing1

guts skin

We ate only the longitudinal muscles, and we ate them raw... and they weren't nearly as delicious as a raw oyster. Maybe they're better cooked? Maybe you can eat the entire cucumber? We found several videos of people eating sea cucumber whole.

Here's a cucumber suffering gratuitous irritation:

Frankly, sea cucumbers freak us out.



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