We report on mode-locked thulium-doped fiber lasers with high-energy nanosecond pulses, relying on the transmission in a semiconductor saturable absorber (SESA) and a carbon nanotube (CNTs-PVA) film separately. A section of an SMF–MMF–SMF structure multimode interferometer with a transmission peak wavelength of ～2003 nm was used as a wavelength selector to fix the laser wavelength. When the SESA acted as a saturable absorber (SA), the mode-locked fiber laser had a maximum output power of ～461 mW with a pulse energy of ～0.14 μJ and a pulse duration of ～9.14 ns. In a CNT-film-based mode-locked fiber laser, stable mode-locked pulses with the maximum output power of ～46 mW, pulse energy of ～26.8 nJ and pulse duration of ～9.3 ns were obtained. To the best of our knowledge, our experiments demonstrated the first 2 μm region ‘real’ SA-based dissipative soliton resonance with the highest mode-locked pulse energy from a ‘real’ SA-based all-fiberized resonator.