Abstract: The east sea cucumber is an abundant species of the family Holothuroidea with high nutritive value. However, it can't be utilized because its body wall contains a large amount of heavy metals. To develop a method for desorption of heavy metals, the distribution of heavy metals in the east sea cucumber was firstly investigated. Then, chemical method and chemo-enzymatic method were used to remove the heavy metals. The conditions including the soaking reagent and temperature, enzyme type and amount, treating time by chemical method and chemo-enzymatic method were optimized. The results showed that the chemo-enzymatic method exhibits better result both in appearance quality and removing rate than chemical method. The optimal conditions of chemo-enzymatic method for desorption of heavy metals were as followings: enzymmatic hydrolysis at 37℃ for an hour with papain (0.10%, w/w) , then, being soaked with citric acid (2.0%, w/v) for 48 hour. Under these conditions, 90% of heavy metals in the east sea cucumber were removed.