Key Largo Thing

[Steve_C]

Came across this on Molasses reef yesterday in about 25 ft of water. At first when looking quickly at it I thought it was some kind of eel but it is clearly not. It is 2-3 inches across. We are seeing a 18 or more inches of it. It is not a sea cucumber. they are firm and hold their shape, at least the ones I know are. I gently nudged the lower part of this with the camera and it withdrew into the rock. However when it withdrew the skin collapsed in rings. Closest thing to describe it would be it looked like a flexible version of one of those flexible dry cleaner vent hoses where a layer of plastic overlaps a wire spring.

Any ideas?

For some reason I am unable to attach the photo as either jpg or pdf. Uploads are failing at all sizes. Will try again later. It is light colored with many dark blotches.

 

[knotical]

Without a picture, these are pretty much guesses, but perhaps:

Holothuria thomasi ?

Eunice roussaei ?

 

[Steve_C]

Eunice roussaei it is definitely not. Not worm like.

Holothuria thomasi sure looks right. Tiger tail sea cucumber. The ones we see in NC are harder and not very flexible. This one is very flexible.

Thanks


I sent photo over to my webpage. For some reason this server does not think it is a valid image file. You can see it at

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~slc/creatum.jpg

 

[knotical]

Your picture does appear to be of a Tiger Tail Sea Cucumber.

From the Humann / Deloach book Reef Creatures:

When disturbed, rapidly retracts body into recess.

 

[Steve_C]

That describes it. Very interesting creature.

 

[Scuba_Jenny]

yep. tigertail seacucumber.

 

[Donnah]

Once in Roatan someone wanted me to take a picture of her holding a tigertail. It kept getting longer and longer and longer. Next thing we knew, she had about 20 feet of it draped around her. Never got the picture -- I was laughing so hard the camera kept shaking. I'm sure we traumatized the poor thing. At night I have seen them stretched out on the bottom. During the day, one end is attached under a rock and just a small part of it shows.