On this morning's beach walk, my companions and I came across this creature, deposited on the shore by a strong incoming tide.
The orifice on the left side of its body in the photo above was opening and closing, so it was presumably still alive. A tender-hearted companion hoped to rescue the creature, but not knowing what it was, and some gelatinous masses of marine invertebrate being venomous, we were not about to touch it. Eventually, she was able to move the mystery organism with her flip-flop, but every time it was successfully moved into the water, a wave brought it back onto the sand, and we finally gave up and left it to its fate (which on this stretch of the Yucatan coast probably involves being eaten by gulls).
A Google search identified the unfortunate creature as some type of sea cucumber, possibly Thyone mexicana, the Mexican sea cucumber, though it was not in the best of health, several Gulf species look basically alike to me, and we did not measure it or check out the tube feet it supposedly has. For those unfamiliar with these creatures, they inhabit the floors of shallow seas and feed on whatever debris comes their way. Some do indeed have venomous defenses, so we were wise not to touch this unfamiliar being.
Disgusting as sea cucumbers look (at least by human aesthetic standards), they have a number of predators, including crabs, fish, turtles, and the aforementioned gulls (when they find their way above water. What I had not known is that some species are being hunted almost to extinction because humans in many places (mostly China and South Asia, though the market is expanding) have developed a taste for sea cucumber flesh. A shocking-to-me statistic: dried sea cucumber meat is selling on the black market for over $200 a pound, and poachers have been known to attack legitimate fishing boats in waters off the Yucatan peninsula.
Having encountered the creature in the wild, and even without knowing the horrors involved in its harvesting, I have no desire to order it should I encounter it on a menu.
Let's leave it for the sharks and sea turtles.
Sources for further reading:
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