Monday 6 February 2012

Sea cucumbers!

During today's shift a lot of the grab samples that have been coming up have been composed of mud and clay with some pebbles and cobbles. Living in amongst the muddy sediments have been lots of exciting animals including many different types of worms, crabs and bivalves. We have also picked up sea cucumbers at a couple of the stations.


Here's a picture of Thyone fusus which came up in two of our samples (it looks better underwater when the tentacles are extended during feeding - see the link for an underwater picture) and we had Paracucumaria come up in one of the grab samples but sadly I wasn't quick enough to get a picture.