A thick grey-brown sea cucumber of seagrass and sand flats, and the largest commonly seen in the region.
To about 50 cm. Transversely wrinkled, dull brown or grey above with occasional warts, the underside reddish, orange or pale and uniformly covered in tube feet.
The three-rowed sea cucumber carries three coarse rows of distinct dark warts on its back, which this one lacks.
Usually two to ten metres and to twenty, on sand in calm water, in seagrass, on offshore reef and in mangrove. It is a deposit feeder, taking sediment in and passing it out cleaned.
Listed as Least Concern, but it has been banned from harvest in Panama after overfishing and the Venezuelan fishery collapsed by 1995.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.