Stiff-Footed Sea Cucumber (Eupentacta quinquesemita)

Description: The stiff-footed or white sea cucumber can be pale cream colored or white with some hints of light yellow or pink. It’s body is lined with five double rows of stiff little tube feet and eight long, wispy oral tentacles plus two smaller tentacles on the mouth end. They can grow to be 10 cm long.

Habitat: This species of sea cucumber is found from southern Alaska to Baja California, Mexico and lives amongst rocks and cobble in the mid intertidal zone down to about 55 m underwater.

Diet: The stiff-footed sea cucumber uses their oral tentacles to catch food, like plankton or detritus, and then pushes the food into its mouth. 

Tide Pool Tidbits:

• Stiff-footed sea cucumbers are deadly to fish due to the presence of a poison along their body. This poison must not harm sea stars, like sunflower stars and leather stars, that readily eat them.

• The oral tentacles are rarely exposed during the day.

• This species may spit out their guts on an annual basis every fall.

Reference: The New Beachcomber’s Guide to the Pacific Northwest by J Duane Sept, Walla Walla University