Profitability of the Mediterranean and NE Atlantic new target sea cucumber species: some repercussions for their fisheries management

The term profitability can be understood as the ratio in percentage between fresh weight of animals and the dry weight of the obtained beche-de-mer depending on the body wall thickness of sea cucumbers and water content. Specimens decrease their weight and length considerably, when they are processed. However, scarce information about profitability of commercial sea cucumber from Mediterranean and NE Atlantic has been published until now. In this study, we focused on Holothuria tubulosa, Holothuria polii, Holothuria mammata and Holothuria arguinensis. For most of the species considered, a good lineal regression was found between eviscerated length (EL) vs eviscerated weight (EW), and EW vs dried weight (DW)however, H. arguinensis showed a high dispersal of data and low regression coefficients. The highest profitability (20.57 % +/- 4.40) was registered on H. arguinensis and the second one (15.36 % +/- 2.68) on H. polii. H. mammata and H. tubulosa showed lower profitability (11.95 % +/- 0.54 and 10.75 % +/- 0.55, respectively). Significant differences were found between profitability values of the studied species. Some implications for fisheries management were deduced from the relationships between profitability vs EW.CUMARSUR project - Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia [PTDC/MAR-BIO/5948/2014]HOLREMAR project - Sayanes Mar S.L.FCTPortuguese Foundation for Science and Technology [IF/00998/2014, CCMAR/BI/0007/2015