Sea pig is the common name for the unusually cute sea cucumber formally known as Scotoplanes globosa, a creature found in the abyssal zone at almost four miles down (by contrast, the deepest part of the Grand Canyon is a little over a mile deep). The Scotoplanes genus was originally discovered by H. Thiel in 1882 during the HMS Challenger expedition and since then, they’ve been found in every ocean on earth. They are deposit feeders that harvest detritus with the tentacles that surround their mouths but they are selective in what they eat, consuming food that has settled out of the water column in 100 days or less. What happens on the ocean surface has a direct impact on the sea pig- in 1997 the El Nino and La Nina cycles enriched their food supplies and lead to a population explosion so the opposite could be true in the face of ongoing climate change. I think these cute little sea pigs deserve our protection, don’t you?