Filed under Animals
Sea cucumbers are marine animals (echinoderm of class Holothuroidea) with a leathery skin and an elongated soft, cucumber-shaped body containing a single, branched gonad.
Sandy sea cucumber (Holothuria atra) can be well camouphlaged (from http://www.ladyelliot.com.au/floraFauna/detail.asp?ID=30)
Sea cucumbers are found on the sea floor worldwide. They inhabit seagrass meadows, coral reefs and soft bottoms of water bodies. The number of holothurian species worldwide is about 1,250 with the greatest number being in the Asia Pacific region.
The diet of most cucumbers consists of plankton and decaying organic matter found in the sea. One way they might get a supply of food is to position themselves in a current where they can catch food that flow by with their tentacles when they open. Another way is to sift through the bottom sediments using their tentacles.
Many of these are gathered for human consumption and some species are cultivated in aquaculture systems. The harvested product is variously referred to as trepang, bêche-de-mer or balate.
Sea cucumber is traded in various forms such as frozen, gutted, boiled, salted, smoked, and dried.
Dried sea cucumbers
The specie is valued for its high nutritional content and therapeutic properties. The price for dried sea cucumber fetching up to $500US per kilo.
Because of their strong commercial value in Asian markets – where they’re sold in dried form as “beche-de-mer” – they have been harvested so heavily in some areas that remaining stocks could have trouble breeding.
The Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) has tightened regulations for trading sea cucumber to prevent over exploitation and encourage spawning of the species. Sea cucumbers cannot be transported without a Local Transport Permit issued by the Provincial Fishery Office or a fisheries quarantine officer. It is also prohibited to sell and transport undersized sea cucumbers – those that are only five centimeters in length – except in dried form.