On the Sea Cucumber Salon
Yup, there's now evidence of me cleaning a holothurian with a toothbrush, courtesy Cindy.
(Enypniastes eximia — I think — the more famous swimming sea cucumber, and it was pretty intact, and sharing a jar with a mashed specimen, so it was gunked up.)
I actually ended up splitting the samples, and grabbing a new barcode for the good specimen, because the mashed critter was leaking muck and fluids into the ethanol… which meant that the other one was getting manky.
These little weirdos are very delicate and it’s worth taking a bit more care if you get one intact. The deep sea holothurians are so diverse and extraordinary, and their anatomy can be utterly baffling — much harder to ID and understand if they’re damaged and/or filthy.
The image below has three in pretty good condition - bit of crap on them, but they're mucousy on the outside and stuff just sticks to them, so that's pretty normal.
Alternatively, you could get a specimen that looks like this:
Bit of a bummer all round, honestly.
Just to be clear, the Sea Cucumber Salon was a rare event! If a specimen was very robust and sandy, or it seemed like I could clean it up a bit without damaging it, and — most of all — if I had a few minutes to spare (usually I did not)? Then I’d have a go at grooming the holo.
Most of the species we collected from the deep sea were simply too delicate and soft to tolerate that kind of thing; those that were large and robust usually didn’t need it.
But it was weirdly satisfying to spend a couple of minutes at the task and then realise I could actually SEE some of the soft tissue structures now.
Of course… now I’m the lady who grooms sea cucumbers with a toothbrush and that’s a level of eccentric you just don’t come back from, so fuck it, lean all the way in, right?
