A conservation win for sea cucumbers

By Kenny Wolfe (UQ)

Sea cucumbers are like the earthworms or vacuums of the sea, helping keep the seafloor clean and productive. While seemingly uncharismatic, they are critical to a healthy ocean.

For many centuries, sea cucumbers have been traded as a delicacy around the world. From as early as the 1700s, sea cucumbers were traded between Indonesian fishers and Indigenous communities in northern Australia, making it one of Australia’s oldest export industries. The high-value status of sea cucumbers developed under the pretence that, because of their phallic shape, consuming sea cucumbers would raise the libido and endow sexual desires. These animals are now highly exploited, and their fishery follows similar trends to other luxury seafood products such as shark fin. The rarer a species becomes, the more valuable it is perceived.

Sea cucumbers continue to have high commercial value today, with some species fetching a market price over US $1000 per kilo. As sea cucumbers are slow moving, they are easily collected by hand and so it is not surprising that their wild harvest is often unsustainable. Many species are now in a perilous state of conservation. In 2014, sixteen species of sea cucumber were listed on the IUCN Red List as endangered or vulnerable to extinction, and in 2019, three species known at ‘teatfish’ were listed on the CITES Appendix II to reduce global trade of these at-risk species. However, fishing continues at a global scale.

The harvest of sea cucumbers is extensive and exhaustive across our oceans, most intensively from shallow waters in tropical coral reefs. Sea cucumber fisheries operate in all of Australia’s tropical waters from Western Australia to the Coral Sea, including on the Great Barrier Reef. The Queensland Sea Cucumber Fishery harvests a range of species and has been shown to follow global patterns of exploitation even within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. For example, in 1999, fishing of the high-value black teatfish (Holothuria whitmaei) ceased on the Great Barrier Reef due to significant overharvest and concerns for the species. However, the black teatfish fishery reopened in 2019, just as their CITES listing was gazetted. It seemed there was a race to fish this high-value, at-risk species before CITES legislation could be adequately considered and actioned.

Although fishing of the black teatfish continued for two years, in December 2021, the Australian Minister for the Environment ruled that permission to harvest the black teatfish would not be granted. This followed several years of decisionmaking and submissions from researchers and the Australian Coral Reef Society (find them here). This decision was influenced by the poor local and global conservation status of this species, and lack of recovery on the Great Barrier Reef since their excessive overharvest pre-1999. The black teatfish is now protected from fishing on the Great Barrier Reef, at least until reassessment in 2024.

The Minister’s decision was coupled with ten novel conditions for the fishery, including greater attention to target species, fishing grounds and quotas, improved reporting and fishery independent surveys. This is a major outcome for our exploited and endangered sea cucumbers, which have never seen this level of protection or consideration in Australia. It is important for researchers and fishery managers to work in partnership to ensure sustainable harvest and fishing practices, especially for our threatened and CITES-listed species.

Sea cucumbers are often sold as a dried product with a high market price. The “teats” of teatfish make them identifiable even when dried, which is expected to reduce black market trade.

Photo credits Top and above: Kenny Wolfe. Right: Bristle worms, Christina Langley.