Abstract: The body wall, intestines and gonads are important components of sea cucumber, which are rich in nutrients such as proteins, amino acids, unsaturated lipids and trace elements. Among them, proteins generate a variety of biologically active peptides with antioxidant, anti-fatigue, anti-tumour and blood pressure lowering properties by proteolytic enzymes, which become important sources of the development of biologically active peptides. In this paper, we systematically review the research progress on the preparation, isolation and purification techniques of active peptides from sea cucumber and their physiological activities and mechanisms of action. At present, enzymatic and fermentation methods have become the main methods for the preparation of sea cucumber active peptides due to their mild reaction conditions, high efficiency, low cost and the ability to obtain active peptides with diverse structures; the separation and purification system based on ultrafiltration membrane pre-gradation combined with multimodal chromatography technology achieves the high efficiency of the separation and precise enrichment of the sea cucumber active peptides; meanwhile, in-depth analysis of the molecular mechanisms of sea cucumber active peptides to exert antioxidant, anti-tumour and anti-inflammatory effects through the scavenging of free radicals and regulation of the signalling pathway was carried out in this paper. Meanwhile, the molecular mechanism of sea cucumber active peptides through scavenging free radicals and regulating signalling pathways was analysed in depth.