Sea Cucumber Fisheries: Market Potential, Trade, Utilization and Challenges for Expanding the Production in the South-East Asia

Abstract

During the recent decades, invertebrate fisheries have expanded in catch and value worldwide. One increasingly harvested group is sea cucumbers (class Holothuroidea), which have been fished, with more than 50 species commercially exploited worldwide. They are highly valued bioresources in Asia and sold as trepang or beche-de-mer (the product after gutting, cooking, salting and drying sea cucumber), and is exported worldwide to Asian dried seafood markets. Market preferences of these natural resources contribute to shape their exploitation and production. In South-East Asia, important sources of sea cucumber are: Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia, with Hong Kong and Singapore being major export countries. They are traditionally consumed raw, dried and boiled in many tropical and subtropical countries. In addition, sea cucumbers have also been popular as a traditional food tonic in China, Korea and Taiwan for thousands of years. Sea cucumbers are considered to exert wound healing and reduce arthritis pain, hence are widely used in Asian folk medicine and human health therapeutics. Sea cucumbers are an ideal fishery resource for which the collection and processing methods are easy, requiring no specialized skill or equipment and, once processed, bche-de-mer has a shelf life of many years. Historically sea cucumbers were exploited opportunistically as part of a multi-species fishery because, once processed, they could be stockpiled until traders passed through the region. In the international seafood trade, sea cucumbers are regarded as a specialty product that falls within the same niche market as other high-value luxury seafood products, including shark fin, fish maw and abalone. However, supply of sea cucumber in South-East Asia is declining due to overfishing and unstrained harvesting. Despite significant volume is being produced from sea ranching and pond culture, this is not enough to offset rapidly declining collection from the wild. This and the increasing demand for the product have kept prices at attractive levels. The marketing system for sea cucumber in South-East Asia is generally inefficient, and marketing channels are multilayered. Information asymmetry encourages proliferation of redundant players in the distribution system, while high transaction costs keep the overall marketing margin high but the price received by collectors low. Unlocking the full potential of the sea cucumber industry calls for a set of well-conceived strategies that would sustain supply from the wild, increase the supply from aquaculture, improve primary processing and remove the inefficiencies in the distribution system. Emerging systems for more-efficient processing of the product should also be explored to address issues of economies of scale and improve returns on investment for good 'manufacturing practice' (GMP) and 'hazard analysis critical control