There are roughly 1,200 species of sea cucumbers and now a team of researchers from Nagoya University in Japan have found that 10 of these are bioluminescent in their natural habitats. The findings are part of a new textbook called The World of Sea Cucumber published on November 10.
Found in every ocean on Earth, but best represented in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean, sea cucumbers generally live in shallow water. That said, these 10 new species live in waters thousands of feet deep, indeed to discover them, the team deployed a remotely operated vehicle about 3,280 feet below the surface of Monterey Bay, California.
They noticed that, unlike the more uniform bioluminescence seen in specimens taken onto ships, the bioluminescence was emitted from the sea cucumber’s head to tail, and then back up similar to a wave. The previously unknown luminosity in these 10 deep-sea species suggests that sea cucumbers are more diverse than scientists once believed.
[image – Pannychia moseleyi, a bioluminescent sea cucumber, photographed in a ship laboratory after being collected at a depth of about 1300 metres – Manabu Bessho-Uehara/MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute)]