Prospects for hatchery and culture of sea cucumbers in India

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