The Harvesting of Sea Cucumbers in the Galapagos Islands

Harvesting sea cucumbers in the Galapagos Islands The Ecuadorian government failed to implement the ban for four years, but the sea cucumbers on the Galapagos Islands were still captured illegally. Most sea cucumbers are dried and exported to Taiwan and Hong Kong. In the ocean of the mainland of Ecuador, sea cucumbers with commercial value are deprived. The controversy over the Galapagos Islands involves the inability to sustain the sea cucumber harvest and removal of millions of sea cucumbers will have a negative impact on the food chain of the Galapagos Islands.

Conand C., 2006 Harvest and trade: use of sea cucumber: sacific economic characteristics of sea cucumber fishery, current international trade, illegal and unreported unregulated trade, bycatch, and sea cucumber trade. In: Minutes of CITES on Protection of the Holothuriidae and Stichopodidae sections of the Sea Cucumber Seminar. NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-OPR 34, Silver Spring, Maryland, pp. 244. Gamboa R., Gomez A. L., Nyvere M. F., 2004 Philippine sea cucumber fishery and aquaculture industry. In: Advancement of Cultivation and Management of Sea Cucumber Lovatelli A., Conand C., Purcell S., Uthicke S., Hamel J. F., Mercier A. (ed.), FAO Fisheries Technical Paper No. 463, Rome, FAO, 425 pp

Introduction Sea cucumbers are invertebrates with large catch in the tropics (Conand 2006; Choo 2008; Hasan & Abd El-Rady 2012). Their harvest is mainly for the production of sea cucumber - dried sea cucumber, which is considered to be the staple food of China (Conand 1989; Schoppe 2000a; Akamine 2002; Gamboa et al 2004; Toral-Granda et al . 2008; Purcell 2010). Sea cucumbers are also used for the manufacture of various chemicals (Choo 2008; Bordbar et al. 2010). They also increase ocean productivity by recovering sediment and organism perturbations (Miller & Pawson 1990; Uthicke & Klumpp 1997; Uthicke 2001; Wolkenhauer et al. 2010; Lampe 2013), as a biofilter (Conand 2006) It is ecologically important. Despite a general decline in production, global demand for snails has continued to increase, and the volume of transactions is on the rise (Gamboa et al. 2004; Akamine 2005).