page_title: Scotoplanes
section_title: Ecology
hierarchical_section_title: Scotoplanes / Ecology
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Un concombre de mer "cochon de mer" (Scotoplanes globosa), photographié à 1282m de profondeur. Un crabe d'une espèce non identifiée (famille Lithodidae) se dissimule dessous. (Photo NOAA/MBARI)English: A sea cucumber (Scotoplanes globosa) appearing to "shelter" the crab (family Lithodidae). The recorded raw location and environmental measurements at time of capture are Lat= 36.694919 Lon= -122.297988 Depth= 1282.34 m Temp= 3.145 C Sal= 34.523 PSU Oxy= 0.789 ml/l Xmiss= 87.66%. In 2004, the ship Med Taipei, lost 15 shipping containers just outside of Monterey Bay. Later that same year, MBARI discovered one of these containers resting on the seafloor at 1280 meters below the surface. From March 8-10, 2011, MBNMS and MBARI scientists revisited this shipping container to document its condition and collect sediment cores and organisms for further study.
context_page_description: Scotoplanes, commonly known as the sea pig, is a genus of deep-sea sea cucumbers of the family Elpidiidae, order Elasipodida.
context_section_description: Scotoplanes live on deep ocean bottoms, specifically on the abyssal plain in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, typically at depths of over 1,200–5,000 metres. Some related species can be found in the Antarctic. Scotoplanes (and all deep-sea holothurians) are deposit feeders, and obtain food by extracting organic particles from deep-sea mud. Scotoplanes globosa has been observed to demonstrate strong preferences for rich, organic food that has freshly fallen from the ocean's surface, and uses olfaction to locate preferred food sources such as whale corpses.Scotoplanes have very fragile bodies; if they get caught in a trawler they break apart like jell-o. Scotoplanes, like many sea cucumbers, often occur in huge densities, sometimes numbering in the hundreds when observed. Early collections have recorded groups of up to 300-600 individuals. Sea pigs are also known to host different parasitic invertebrates, including gastropods (snails) and small tanaid crustaceans.
  Scotoplanes sp, like other sea cucumbers, host parasitic and commensal organisms. For example, it provides a shelter to juvenile crabs, Neolithodes diomedeae. It is known that such relationship benefits the crabs because they can reduce risks of predation when they are under the shelter.
caption: A living Scotoplanes from Monterey Bay with a juvenile Neolithodes diomedae king crab sheltering beneath it at a depth of approx. 1260 metres. Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, 2016.
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