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August 8, 2020: Sea Cucumber

This image won the Explorer’s Choice Photo Contest for the ‘Exploring the Deep Ocean World and Its Biodiversity’ category as part of our Celebrating Our Ocean Planet campaign. Common names for this bizarre sea cucumber (Enypniastes eximia) seen during the Gulf of Mexico 2017 expedition include Spanish dancer and headless chicken monster. These animals spend most of their time on the seafloor, feeding off surface sediments, but they can swim if they want to get somewhere more quickly or evade a predator.

Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research. Download larger version (jpg, 1.1 MB).

This image won the Explorer’s Choice Photo Contest for the ‘Exploring the Deep Ocean World and Its Biodiversity’ category as part of our Celebrating Our Ocean Planet campaign. Common names for this bizarre sea cucumber (Enypniastes eximia) seen during the Gulf of Mexico 2017 expedition include Spanish dancer and headless chicken monster. These animals spend most of their time on the seafloor, feeding off surface sediments, but they can swim if they want to get somewhere more quickly or to evade a predator.

From: Explorer’s Choice Photo Contest Archive.