Hungry? Have a Delicious Sea Cucumber (Bêche-de-mer)
On Saturday, our regular dive day, we went to Barracuda Point, on the eastern side of Pig Island. The water at the surface was filled with particulate matter, but below about twenty metres, it was fairly clear. Just after we entered the water we saw this huge Sea Cucumber (Thelenota ananas). This species is also known as the Prickly Redfish or the Pineapple Fish. Of course, it’s not a fish at all, neither is it a pineapple. However, its species name, ananas, does mean pineapple. Well, okay, a pineapple is actually Ananas comosus.
Bêche-de-mer
Believe it or not, people eat them. I guess people eat just about anything, but I have a problem with this one. Of course, there are many different species. None of them look tasty to me:
Prickly Red Fish, indeed!
How prickly? Have a look at this. If you scaled this up to human size, we’d all be covered with 10 cm wide spiky star-shaped red warts:
It’s pretty in a very bizarre way – definitely one of the more unusual skins that I’ve seen.
Here is the front end:
Or is it the back end? Some Bêche-de-mer have easily discernible front and rear ends. I didn’t take time to give this one an anatomical exam. You can usually tell by the trail of sandy poo left behind. There was none here. Maybe it was constipated.
Keeping with my rare Christmasy mood, Here is a bit of green to go with our red. It is a particularly lovely Magnificent Anemone (Heteractis magnifica):
The outside of the ‘jug’ is the underside of the anemone. They usually lie in the feeding position, which is spread out like a carpet. If the surge gets to be a bit much or it is not a good feeding time, the skin contracts and pulls up, often leaving only a few tentacles sticking out of a hole. Surprisingly, any anemonefish residing in the anemone will be popping in and out of the hole, much as you see here. By the way, the fish here is the Pink Anemonefish (Amphiprion perideraion).
Keeping in the spirit of “what you see is what I saw” here is an image of some Pickhandle Barracuda (Sphyraena jello) coming up the side of the reef. Note all of the particulate matter floating in the water:
It’s not all clear sailing.
Not forgetting my intent to bring you a Christmas Tree Worm every day until the 25th, here is your Spirobranchus giganteus for today:
Happy holidays!
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Jons, I’ve never tried any advertising on Madang – Ples Bilong Mi. I would give it a go, but I can’t find any way of controlling the ads which people see. I hate the “1 Tip of Flat Belly” ads which seem to be popping up everywhere. I see this as the main problem – lack of control. SO, I don’t make any money from my journal. It has however opened many doors to business opportunities. Thanks for your complement. I enjoy striving to bring beauty and humor to my readers.
Someone suggested to me that Google has an ad service that pays on page hits, but it’s a very low price per hit. You have to have thousands per day. I’m averaging about 5,000 page hits per day, so I could make a few bucks. But, I just can’t get past the idea of my readers having those stupid ads shoved right in the middle of what I worked to make beautiful and amusing. It’s a difficult thing to balance in your mind. Make Money? Maker Art? It seems you can’t do both.
it is easy to relieve constipation. just eat some fruits and veggies with lots of juice and fiber.;-;
??
Fortunately, Ross, I’m not constipated.