Sea cucumbers as new marine resource in Europe
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Centro do Ciências do Mar (CCMAR), Portugal
Global capture fishery production was of 93.7 million tonnes in 2012 and the global aquaculture production attained 90.4 million tonnes (US$144.4 billion) (FAO, 2014). Of the total number of stocks assessed in 2011, fully fished stocks accounted for 61.3% (FAO, 2014). The invertebrate fisheries have rapidly expanded on multiple scales (Anderson et al., 2011). Sea cucumbers are being considered as new food sources around the world: at least 66 species are being fished from more than 40 countries reaching prices of up to USD500 per kg (Purcell 2014). Sea cucumbers have since long been sourced from tropical waters to service the luxury seafood market in China with the dried ‘bêche-de-mer’ product. More than 70% of tropical sea cucumber fisheries are fully exploited, over-exploited or depleted (Purcell 2014).
The overfishing of sea cucumbers in the Indo-Pacific, has resulted in catch of new target species from Mediterranean Sea and Northeastern Atlantic Ocean (González-Wangüemert et al., 2014; 2015; 2016), such as Holothuria mammata, Holothuria arguinensis, Holothuria tubulosa and Holothuria polii.
The main objectives of this presentation are: i) to show the current status of sea cucumbers as new marine resource in Europe; ii) to assess the problems linked with their fisheries in the Mediterranean and NE Atlantic waters; iii) to review the current legislation in Europe for catching; iv) to analyse the potential of sea cucumbers for aquaculture.
The main countries exploring these resources are Turkey, Spain, Greece, Italy and Portugal. In Turkey the sea cucumber fishery started in 1996 and nowadays has a total annual production of 550 000 Kg, with 80% of the catches corresponding to H. polii and 20% H. tubulosa plus H. mammata (González-Wangüemert et al., 2014, 2015). In this country, the sea cucumbers are caught by hookah facilities, a diver catch around 2.000-3.000 individuals per day (Aydın, 2008); the current Turkish fleet (120 vessels) can collect around 720.000-1.080.000 sea cucumbers per day (González-Wangüemert et al., 2014). As consequence, some signals of over-exploitation on these new target species were already detected showing loss of the largest and heaviest individuals and genetic diversity (González-Wangüemert et al., 2015). In Spain, the fishery is focused on Parastichopus regalis (Ramón et al., 2010) which also showed negative effects of over-exploitation in populations from Catalonia (Maggi and González-Wangüemert, 2015). However, another species are also caught in Spain, where more than 10 companies export sea cucumbers (H. tubulosa, Holothuria forskali, H. mammata, H. arguinensis) to China (http://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/ES/ sea-cucumber-supplier.html), some of them with 1–2 millions $US of total revenue. In Greece, H. tubulosa has been harvested as bait in long-line fisheries for more than a century (Antoniadou and Vafidis, 2011) and nowadays some companies as Sea Cucumber Greece (http://www.sea-cucumbers.com/) are catching them for selling in China, Australia, Japan, Canada and USA. More recently, Italy started the processing of sea cucumbers at small-scale (Sicuro and Levine, 2011). In Portugal, several companies are selling sea cucumbers, mainly H. arguinensis, Holothuria sanctori, H. forskali and H. mammata, offering supply ability among 2.000–50.000 kg/month and prices oscillating among 70–350 euro/kg (http://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/ PT/sea-cucumber.html) depending on quality of product.
The sea cucumber fisheries are regulated in Turkey (mainly with restriction on fishery areas and number of vessels), although the management measures are not being very effective; however, in the last years some studies are carried out to assess the status of the stocks in the protected and non-protected areas to improve the sustainability of these fisheries in Turkish waters. In Spain, it was published a recent legislation to control the Holothuria forskali catches in Galiza (NW Spain), although the sea cucumbers fisheries are not regulated in the most of Spanish communities, with a lot of illegal catches specially in Andalusia (S Spain). Finally, in Portugal there is legislation about sea cucumbers but only including Holothuria forskali, Parastichopus regalis and Mesothuria intestinalis (Diário da República, 1.a série — N.o 235 — 6 de Dezembro de 2010, Annex I), being also forbidden their catches in protected areas as Ria Formosa (S Portugal).
Owing to strong market drivers for these luxury seafoods, aquaculture presents a profitable alternative export source and could provide a tool for future culture-based stocking programs (i.e. sea ranching and sea farming). While sea cucumber aquaculture methods have been developed for eastern Asian and Indo-Pacific species, resulting in lucrative aquaculture production (Hair et al. 2012), biotechnology for species in the Mediterranean and NE Atlantic is starting to be developed by our team (MARESMA, http://www.maresma.org/). In fact, it was implemented with success the induction to reproduction on H. arguinensis under different conditions (Domínguez-Godino et al. 2015) and larvae and juveniles were maintained. In addition to providing a high-value export commodity, sea cucumbers can also reduce wastes from fish and shellfish aquaculture because they are able to eat waste products on the sea floor.
Considering this background, it is mandatory to establish a right management for sea cucumber fisheries in Europe, to develop laws to protect and regulate their stocks, and to promote the development of sea cucumber aquaculture which will improve the supply for oriental markets and will allow potential restocking actions.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by CUMFISH (PTDC/MAR/119363/2010; http://www.ccmar. ualg.pt/cumfish/) and CUMARSUR (PTDC/MAR-BIO/5948/2014) projects funded by Fundaç ão para Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal). J. Domínguez-Godino was supported by research fellow (CCMAR/BI/0007/2015). M. Gonzaléz-Wangüemert was supported by FCT postdoctoral grant (SFRH/BPD/70689/2010) and later by FCT Investigator Programme-Career Development (IF/00998/2014).
References
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Keywords:
Sea cucumber fishery,
Aquaculture,
Management,
Over-exploitation,
NE Atlantic
Conference:
IMMR | International Meeting on Marine Research 2016, Peniche, Portugal, 14 Jul - 15 Jul, 2016.
Presentation Type:
Oral presentation
Topic:
Fisheries and Management
Citation:
González-Wangüemert
M and
Godino
JD
(2016). Sea cucumbers as new marine resource in Europe.
Front. Mar. Sci.
Conference Abstract:
IMMR | International Meeting on Marine Research 2016.
doi: 10.3389/conf.FMARS.2016.04.00112
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Received:
27 Apr 2016;
Published Online:
13 Jul 2016.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Mercedes González-Wangüemert, Centro do Ciências do Mar (CCMAR), Faro, 8005-139, Portugal, wangumemar@gmail.com