Sea cucumber （Apostichopus japonicus ） is regarded as a tonic food and traditional medicine in China. In order to aid in investigation of the population structure and marker assisted breeding, 11 microsatellite markers were developed and evaluated with sixty individuals caught from the offing in Shandong Province, China. In the NCBI database, 20 sequences of Apostichopus japonicus were found to contain microsatellites when data mining was performed. Eight microsatellite-containing sequences were chosen for designing the PCR primers. The results showed that six primer pairs successfully amplified scorable PCR products and revealed polymorphism with 5.2 alleles per locus. The locus AJMS007 had the greatest number of alleles （9）, while the locus AJMS004 had the lowest number of alleles （3）. The average Ho and He values of six loci were 0.3611 and 0.6402, respectively. PIC value was 0.4862 for locus AJMS004, and more than 0.5 for the other five loci. Five microsatellite markers developed and characterized in Parastichopus californicu were used to assess for transferability analysis in Apostichopus joponicus. The results showed that all the five primer pairs could amplify clear and scorable PCR products with expected size in Apostichopus japonicus. A total of 22 alleles were obtained for the five loci, with 4.4 alleles per locus. The locus Psc 2 had the greatest number of alleles （9） and the locus Psc 3 had the lowest number of alleles （2）. The average Ho and He values of the five transferred loci were 0. 1733 and 0.4201, respectively. And Psc 2 showed the highest PIC value of 0.8500.