Sea cucumber aquaculture hatchery production, juvenile growth and industry challenges

Sea cucumber aquaculture hatchery production, juvenile growth and industry challenges 

Mercier, Memorial University, Canada and J.-F. Hamel, Society for the Exploration and Valuing of the Environment (SEVE), Canada 

Key words sea cucumber, beche-de-mer, aquaculture, nursery, sea ranching, Apostichopus japonicuSy Holothuria scabra, Isostichopus fuscus. 

Sea cucumbers belong to the phylum Echinodermata, class Holothuroidea, and are thus also called holothuroids. Of the approximately 1400 species that have been described so far, some 77 are harvested commercially at various scales around the world (Purcell et al, in press). While the footballshaped shmy creatures are not necessarily attractive at first glance, they are nonetheless a prized commodity. 

Sea cucumber fisheries have existed for centuries, driven primarily by the Chinese markets (Chen, 2003 Lovatelli et al., 2004 Toral-Granda, 2008). They constitute a long-standing tradition in many countries of the tropical Indo-Padfic, where sea cucumbers are typically collected by hand, either 

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