Deep-Sea Sea Cucumbers! Transparent Guts Galore!

Wednesday (today) was the last day of the Okeanos Explorer's Oceano Profundo expedition, exploring the deep-sea habitats off Puerto Rico in the tropical Atlantic. In the next few months, they will transit through the Panama canal and onto Hawaii! 

Among the most commonly encountered of the animals they encountered were swimming sea cucumbers! I've written about swimming sea cucumbers here.  Most of the ones we saw were benthopelagic, which is to say that they live on the bottoms but swim when needed/desired. There's really only one that is truly pelagic... 

Several different morphotypes (species?) were seen..

1. This transparent one...

Here it was as it was taking off...

                             

                             

Is this the same as this one??

 Were those the same as these? An Enypniastes like species (possibly Amperima or Peniagone?)

It left MANY nice traces!

2. This "sea pig" like one.. Elpidiidae? 

3. The following ones were all "Benthodytes-like"

This like one had a clear body and with an highly convoluted gut! 

This one was a solid purple...

4. and there was this whitish purple beauty! 

5. and finally there was this weird pink one we saw yesterday....

This last week had SO MANY exciting observations, so maybe there will be some extra posts soon....