Holothuria forskali is a sea cucumber whose soft and somewhat cylindrical body can be from 15 to 40 cm in length. The surface is covered by numerous conical short outgrowths, generally white. The colour is variable, brown, black, yellowish with brown mottlings. The mouth, at one end of the tube-shaped body is surrounded by small oral tentacles used to collect the mud from which the sea cucumber extracts various nutrients. Divers may frequently discover under the guise of strings of small muddy tubes, wastes of digestion of sea cucumbers. When attacked or disturbed, Holothuria forskali may expel by the anus numerous white,long and sticking filaments which can be regenarated within a month. It lives on sandy or muddy bottoms and on rocks.br /> It is found from surface to 70 m deep in the Atlantic Ocean, the English channel and the Mediterranean sea.
Phylum Echinodermata, class Holothuroidea, order Aspidochirotida, family Holothuriidae, Holothuria forskali DelleChiaje, 1823.
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Holothuria forskali
Photographs: © Wilfried Bay-Nouailhat. Published with author's kind permission.
Holothuria forskali, Iles Glénan, South-Brittany, West of France. Depth 12 meters.
Holothuria forskali, Iles Glénan, South-Brittany, West of France. Depth 7 meters.
Text: Anne Bay-Nouailhat © 2004-2008.
Translation: Anne Bay-Nouailhat © 2007-2008.
