Have you ever sampled sea cucumber? Dipped in batter and fried to a golden brown, they taste like clam strips. The skin, left in the sun for a few days, turns thin, black and crispy. Reconstituted in water, it becomes chewy and tastes like a cross between fish and seaweed.

        As it turns out, for nearly 1,000 years, the Chinese have valued them, not only for good eating but as a remedy for arthritis and an outstanding aphrodisiac.

        The word must be out, because during the last decade the Northwest has experienced a sea cucumber boom. A scant 400,000 pounds of sea cucumbers were harvested in the mid-1980's by a small fleet of boats in the state of Washington. By 1989, 2.5 million pounds of cucumbers were gathered by 125 boats. The increase in harvest has been so dramatic that in 1990 the Washington Department of Fisheries saw fit to begin regulating it.

        The recipient of all this attention is the red sea cucumber, an echinoderm closely related to the sand dollar, starfish and sea urchin. Some common names for the sea cucumber are the sea slug, mammy fish and redfish.

        Although their shape does resemble a large fat garden cucumber, the similarity ends there. There "cukes" vary in color and are squishy, very slippery and studded with warts. The ones harvested in Washington are mostly rust or reddish-brown in color.

        These slow-moving creatures creep along the bottom of the ocean on several rows of tube feet -- very much like the tiny feet or the underside of a starfish. Sea cucumbers have two sets of muscles in the body wall, one circling the body and the other running from end to end. These muscles squeeze the fluid back and forth, causing the animal to shorten and lengthen their body. By alternating these contractions it can move like a worm along the sea bottom. In summertime the animals are at their most active and can move two to thirty feet a day.

        This strange creature cruises along the ocean floor like a cleaner/roto-tiller. All 20 little tentacles on the underside of its body are used as arms to shovel food into its mouth. It can displace as much as 100 pounds of microscopic sea life a year while churning up mud and silt as it searches for food off the sea bottom.

        A sea cucumber's body weight is mainly liquid. However, the skin, muscle, digestive and reproductive organs are not only edible, but prized by Asians. Caloric content of the animal is very low because the flesh contains very little fat.

        While Washington entrepreneurs enjoy the booming Asian market for sea cucumbers, Washington Department of Fisheries is keeping a vigilant watch on the resource. Fisheries have begun to curtail the take by making licenses more difficult to obtain and limiting harvest in any one area to once every four years.

        The newcomer can sample sea cucumber at Chinese restaurants or buy the frozen muscles at Oriental markets. Dusted in flour, dipped in beaten egg, rolled in a Japanese breading called Panko and fried to a golden brown, they are delicious.