Aquaculture Foundation of India & The Fisheries Technocrats Forum
Abstract
According to FAO Annual statistics for 1984,
the world echinodenn halVest in 1983 amounted
to approximately 80,000 tonnes. The roe of
echinoids roughly accounled to two thirds and
the rest is contributed by processed sea
cucumber. In 1989 India exported 51.5 tonnes
of processed sea cucumber valued at 1.25 crores.
The processed sea cucumber is known as
Bache-de-mer. The Bache-de-mer industry is
age old one introduced by the Chinese more
than one thousand years back in India (Hornell,
1917). It is a cottage industry based in the
rural areas and needs very lillie investment.
Since sea cucumbers do not offer any resistance
at the time of capture and also do not make
any attempt to escape, the resources are quickly
exploited from any place. A new resource of
sea cucumber Actinopyga echinites is exploited
from 1989 and by 1992 this resource has
become very scarce (James and Badrudeen,
1995). Another sea cucumber Actinopyga
miliaris is collected from Tuticorin since
January, 1992 and in two months time more
than six lakhs specimens were fished out. This
type of over exploitation leads to depletion of
natural population. In order to replenish the
natural population hatchery technology for seed
production of sea cucumber is developed
