A stout violet cucumber that feeds with branched tentacles held up into the current.
A barrel-shaped sea cucumber to about 18 cm, the body wall firm and violet to deep purple, carrying rows of tube feet in red, orange and yellow along the length of the body. At the front is a crown of ten branched tentacles, orange to crimson and finely divided, and at the back a short tapering end anchored in the substrate. Nothing else on this ground has that combination of colour and shape.
It does not process sediment. It sits on rubble or rock, usually where there is some water movement, with the tentacle crown held up and spread into the current so that particles stick to the branches. Each tentacle is then folded into the mouth in turn and drawn out clean, and an undisturbed animal repeats the cycle steadily, which makes the feeding easier to photograph than the animal is to find.
Records on these coasts are scattered rather than reliable: it is an animal that turns up on particular pieces of ground and is absent from most. Disturbed individuals contract, pull the crown in and become a plain purple lump. Recorded from about 5 to 30 m.
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.