Expansion of global sea cucumber fisheries buoys exports

Abstract

The sea cucumber fisheries have expanded during the past two decades, at a faster rate than the management capacity. The exploitation is now qualified as ‘serial’ and ‘contagious’. I present the most recent trends from the last six years of the FAO capture data. Hong Kong remains the most important market for the imports and re-exports of the processed products, mainly the dry “trepang” (or bêche-de-mer), but also other product forms, which raised difficulties for the analysis. The catches still increase. with new countries developing export fisheries, species targeted change and new products are traded. Rev. Biol. Trop. 65(Suppl. 1): S1-S10. Epub 2017 November 01.