YOU NEVER KNOW......I have to say, you never know what is out there! I went on a late afternoon walk on Head Beach the Sunday after Thanksgiving. No one was on the beach. The tide had just left some flotsam and jetsam that attracted my attention, so I walked up and down trying to check for anything unusual. I wasn't disappointed. As I walked the strand line, I noticed a lot of live Surf Clams were laid high and dry by the tide. Each one is a handful, but I started picking them up and heaving them back into the ocean. (I thought the sign said, "No Lifeguards on Duty"!) Then I saw several sea stars that didn't look very healthy. They too were heaved into the water. Something caught my eye at that point, looking very much like a deer ear! Hey, wait a minute, the hunting season is no
w
over! I took a closer look and picked up what made me think, I've
found my first Sea Cucumber on Small Point! I brought it home
as it was getting dark and I wanted time to determine what it
was. The animal did not fully recover, but after consulting a
few books I am convinced it is a Sea Cucumber. These are related
to Sea Stars and have five rows of tube feet the length of its
body. The mouth is surrounded by ten tentacles. These animals
occur in deeper waters, but I have never seen one here. You can
imagine my joy in finding this animal, though I believe it was
out of the water too long to fully recover. In the picture above
you see a live Surf Clam, two Sea Stars and the Sea Cucumber,
all found stranded on the beach. On the right, I am holding the
top end of the Sea Cucumber to show its mouth and surrounding
tentacles. The tentacles have seen better days.
Just
a few more interesting characteristics of Sea Cucumbers. They
are related to Sea Stars, Sand dollars and Sea Urchins, but what
do they have in common, you might ask. These animals have a mouth
at one end and an anus at the other. They lie on their side, showing
a compromise between radial symmetry of all echinoderms, and the
bilateral symmetry of most higher forms of animal life. The rows
of tube feet in this animal are used for holding the Sea Cucumber
in place or moving slowly over the substrate. These are suspension
feeders. The tube feet surrounding the mouth have been modified
into long, branched, tentacles. The sticky tentacles capture plankton
which is moved to the mouth area. The internal skeleton of these
creatures is made up of widely scattered microscopic plates. Like
all echinoderms, their shape is maintained by a water vascular
system also used to operate those tube feet.