A pulsed cascaded Raman laser (10) includes a pulsed light source (102) for generating a pulsed light (104) having an optical spectrum centered at a source wavelength. A non-linear Raman conversion fiber (106) is coupled to the pulsed light source (102). The pulsed light (104) traverses the nonlinear Raman conversion fiber (106) and the source power at the source wavelength is converted to a power output of an output signal (108) having an output wavelength longer than the source wavelength by a cascaded Stimulated Raman Scattering process, such that most of the source power is converted to the power of the last Stokes order in a single pass through the non-linear Raman conversion fiber (106).