Sea cucumbers are strange enough when they sit on the ocean floor, doing normal sea cucumber things. The sea cucumber family is a diverse one, with wide variation in color, pattern, texture, size, degree of firmness, and what I think of as slime factor, a personal numerical rating system that frequently proves useful when dealing with underwater creatures. Some sea cucumber traits are universal, though: long, sluggish, poop-shaped bodies slowly undulate along the sand, slurping up algae covered detritus and reforming the detritus into long strands of pearl necklace-like poo that winds along the bottom. Weird.
There is a species of sea cucumber here that is one I have not seen elsewhere. This guy has a mottled cream and brown body with large dark leopard spots. He also has pointy white spikes that stick up at regular intervals. They look dangerous, but are actually just as soft as the rest of his body. A member of the cucumber genus commonly called the lion’s paw, he sports a series of short, dark, feelers that protrude slightly from the underside of his ‘head’ when he locomotes and feeds. Looks like a whole row of little feather dusters waving around underneath the front part of his body. Big guy, maybe two feet long, fully extended. He’s a common sight on the wrecks.
Here’s the decidedly uncommon part. I was ending a dive today on a wreck that is settled on its side, just cruising along the high side of the hull on my way back to the Odyssey. Next thing I know I’m the Muad Dib surrounded by spice worms, except they are only two feet long, and I’ve never even been to Arakis. (Frank Herbert is rolling over in his grave right now, and not just because of how thoroughly disappointing all the sequels to Dune were.) But seriously, that’s what it looked like. Materializing in front of me in the murky water are seven or eight of these sea cucumbers, all but the last six inches of their cylindrical bodies held erect, vertical from the wreck, swaying slowly to some unheard echinoderm tune. It looks like they all just decided to skip several rungs on the evolutionary chain and walk upright. Or at least dance around a bit.
When I carefully moved amongst them, I noticed that they were all giving off a milky white fluid from a pore on the backs of their heads, and it was then that I realized with a combination of horror, amusement, and maybe just a little bit of titillation (hey, I live on a boat in the middle of nowhere), that I had stumbled into the middle of a full blown group groping gamete gooing echinoderm orgy. I try not to think about the embryonic larval spawn fry hatchling krill spore supersaturated sexually active stew in which I work, yet here I was in the middle of it all, front row seat to the love fiesta taking place amongst these striving, earnest creatures. Even as I watched, two more cucumbers quite literally reared their ugly heads and joined the party, broadcast spawning for all they were worth. How much more simple would life be for humans if the entire act of courtship, relationship, and mating consisted of walking into a bar, spewing gametes all over the place, and leaving? How much more complex? Something to ponder as I bumped air into my buoyancy compensator and slowly ascended away from the undulating cucumbers and their fertile love cloud. They were still going strong when I lost sight of them, and good for them, I say.
