Pinkfish Sea Cucumber

The pinkfish sea cucumber is a common, easy-to-spot sea cucumber of Indo-Pacific reefs, growing up to 35 cm long and weighing as much as 300 g.

Also known as: edible sea cucumber, burnt sausage sea cucumber, burnt hot dog sea cucumber

This species is easily confused with the black sea cucumber, Holothuria atra, which has a similar shape. The clear giveaway is colour: this species is two-toned, dark above and pink below, while the black sea cucumber is uniformly dark all over.

This sea cucumber has a roughly cylindrical body with rounded ends, though it can stretch, shrink, and change shape. Its skin is usually smooth, but can turn firm and rigid. The upper side is dark reddish-black, while the underside is pinkish-mauve, though the whole animal can sometimes be grey or dark brown instead. Rows of tiny tube feet run along the body, and about twenty of these are modified into feeding tentacles around the mouth.

This species lives on sandy or muddy seabeds, coral rubble, and seagrass meadows, from reef flats and back-reef slopes to shallow lagoons, down to about 45 m.

The pinkfish sea cucumber is mostly nocturnal, hiding under rocks or coral pieces during the day. It feeds by picking up sand and debris with its feeding tentacles, digesting the organic matter as it passes through the gut and leaving a ridge of cleaned sand behind. It moves very slowly, mainly by squeezing its body wall, and can use its tentacles to anchor and pull itself along, or to right itself if flipped over. It has separate sexes and releases eggs and sperm into the water to spawn, and it can also reproduce asexually by splitting into two pieces, each of which regrows its missing parts.

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  Black sea cucumber

  Holothuria atra

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  Black Sea Cucumber

  Holothuria leucospilota

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  Chocolate Chip Sea Cucumber

  Isostichopus badionotus

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  Graeffe's Sea Cucumber

  Pearsonothuria graeffei

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  Greenfish Sea Cucumber

  Stichopus chloronotus

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  Leopard Sea Cucumber

  Bohadschia argus