Abstract: In order to effectively improve the utilization rate of sea cucumber wastes, this paper used sea cucumber intestines wastes as raw materials to extract polysaccharides by hot water extraction method. Combined with response surface methodology to optimize the extraction process and analyzed the physicochemical properties of sea cucumber intestines polysaccharides. Results showed that, the experimental results showed that the optimal extraction conditions of sea cucumber intestines polysaccharides were as follows: Extraction time 1 h, extraction temperature 80 ℃, solid-liquid ratio 1:8 (mg/mL) and repetition of the extracting procedure 2 times. Under these conditions, the average yield of polysaccharides was 4.43%±0.17%. The average molecular weight of the polysaccharides extracted under this condition was 4.91×10⁶ Da by high performance liquid chromatography. Sea cucumber intestinal polysaccharides were mainly composed of fucose, mannose and arabinose, as well as part of galactose and glucose by gas chromatography. The thermogravimetric analysis was used to analyse the thermodynamic properties. It was found that the polysaccharides structure disintegrated at 309 ℃, and the weight loss of polysaccharides were 85.46% at 800 ℃. The surface of polysaccharides were observed as non-uniform elliptical spherical particles by scanning electron microscope. The results preliminarily revealed the characteristics of hot water extraction of sea cucumber intestines polysaccharides, and would provide a theoretical basis for the utilization of sea cucumber waste resources.