• For centuries, Chinese people have sought sea cucumbers as an ingredient in traditional medicine or as a high-status food.
  • In recent decades, skyrocketing demand and prices have led to a marine gold rush for sea cucumbers around the world.
  • In Madagascar, as elsewhere, wild sea cucumbers are declining.
  • Fishers are venturing further out to sea and into deeper waters to pursue them illegally using unsafe SCUBA gear.

NOSY BE, Madagascar — Far offshore from the luxury resorts and seafood restaurants in the resort town of Nosy Be in northwestern Madagascar, three local fishermen are pulling on their SCUBA diving gear in the sweltering midmorning sun. Hunched over my video camera, I capture them making their final preparations, as part of a documentary I am making on fishers in Madagascar. “Tahiry,” the eldest and most experienced, repeatedly bangs his regulator mouthpiece against the side of the narrow wooden dugout canoe. His efforts fail to stop the angry hiss of air escaping from his decrepit-looking dive gear. He needs that precious air to sustain him on the repeated dives he will carry out today.

Tahiry asked that I use a pseudonym because he is about to knowingly break fisheries law, not to mention risk his life by diving far deeper and for far longer than safe diving protocol allows. His target is one of the four “marine treasures” of Cantonese cuisine: the sea cucumber. If he and his dive buddies are successful, they’ll earn far more today than their hospitality-working peers back on shore. Risky though the work may be, the payout makes it an enticing proposition in one of the world’s poorest countries.

Fishers are risking their lives by diving deeper and further offshore to find the last remaining populations of sea cucumbers. Image by Michel Strogoff / © Chris Scarffe Film and Photography.

Sea cucumbers are echinoderms, a group of marine animals that includes sea stars and sea urchins, and live throughout the world’s oceans. There are some 1,250 different species that range in size from approximately 1.9 centimeters (three-quarters of an inch) to more than 1.8 meters (6 feet). Many, as their name suggests, resemble the oblong form of a bloated cucumber.

For centuries, Chinese people have pursued them as an ingredient in traditional medicine or as a high-status food, typically eaten in soups and stews. However, in recent decades the enormous economic transformation in China has caused demand and prices to skyrocket, with the most sought-after species now retailing for up to $3,500 per kilogram. This has led to a marine gold rush, with fishers all over the world racing to meet escalating demand. A 2015 study showed that from 1996 to 2011, the number of exporting countries rose from 35 to 83. Poor management and unsustainable harvesting of the roughly 70 commercially valuable species has caused a predictable pattern of boom and bust in many fisheries: a 2011 paper reported that 72% of the world’s sea cucumber fisheries were already fully exploited, overexploited or depleted.

Later that day, Tahiry carries two heavily rusted dive tanks, still damp from the morning’s diving, off his boat and places them next to a sputtering dive compressor on the beach and a tub containing his meager catch. Tahiry’s athletic physique belies his 53 years. He has been SCUBA diving for sea cucumbers since 1999, six years after the Malagasy government banned the practice in an ill-fated attempt to better manage the fishery.

“Sea cucumbers are decreasing,” he tells me with a rueful smile. “When I started diving for sea cucumbers I would be able to almost fill up a boat like this one,” he says, pointing to his beached canoe. “In the shallows we would collect 300 or more good-sized sea cucumbers in a day, but now we are lucky if we can collect just 10 or 20.”

The true extent of this decline in Madagascar is hard to quantify, as there are no reliable national stock assessment figures. Trade figures provide some detail. According to Madagascar’s former Ministry of Fishery Resources, national production progressively dropped from 1,800 tons in 1995 to 232 tons in 2014, a decrease of 87%. In a country where three-quarters of the people live on less than $1.90 a day, the collapse of this lucrative fishery has enormous implications, both for marine ecosystems, where sea cucumbers play an important role, and for fishing communities.

A fisher in northwest Madagascar prepares to return to shore with a “curryfish” (Stichpus herrmanni) sea cucumber. Image by Michel Strogoff / © Chris Scarffe Film and Photography.

Most Malagasy sea cucumber fishers who dive on SCUBA have no formal training and little knowledge of the physics that dictates how long they can spend underwater at various depths. When they exceed these limits, divers face a host of risks, including paralysis and death.

“If you are diving to 40, 50 or even in excess of 60 meters” — nearly 200 feet — “and are staying down on the bottom for as long as they are doing using such poorly maintained gear, it’s a disaster waiting to happen!” says Jacques Viera, a highly qualified trainer of dive instructors in Nosy Be and one of the few people in Madagascar licensed to treat diving accidents in a hyperbaric chamber. “Even if you dive at only 40 meters [130 feet] it’s still extremely risky. According to the dive tables you only have eight minutes to complete your dive at this depth. But these divers are spending 20 or more minutes at this depth. That’s more than double what is considered safe.”

When I ask Tahiry why he takes these risks, his response is pragmatic. “It’s true, bottle [SCUBA] diving for sea cucumbers is extremely risky. I have seen so many people die from it or get badly injured. We take these risks because we can make good money from it. In life sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Many people here die from non-dive related illness or accidents anyway, so why not take a risk and look after your family?”

Tahiry beckons for to me to follow him as he carries the day’s catch back to his large brick house. Here he will process the sea cucumbers before selling to local buyers. While his house is by no means ostentatious, it stands out from its smaller neighbors made from natural materials. It’s a testament to the relative financial reward of diving for sea cucumbers over the traditional forms of fishing practiced by other community members.

Rusted dive tanks about to be filled with air after a day spent diving for sea cucumbers. A lack of formal training and poorly serviced SCUBA equipment has led to many dive related deaths and injuries of sea cucumber divers in Madagascar. Image by Michel Strogoff / © Chris Scarffe Film and Photography.

Humble though they may be, sea cucumbers fulfill important ecological roles. They are prey for fish and other animals, especially as eggs or larvae, and hosts to a range of smaller animals that live inside their bodies. Their ecosystem function is similar to that of earthworms on land: they consume sediment and recycle nutrients back into the food web. A 2011 study showed that sea cucumbers’ feeding and excretion increase seawater alkalinity, contributing to local buffering of ocean acidification.

Sea cucumbers may also have untapped pharmaceutical value. Steve Purcell, a sea cucumber expert at the National Marine Science Centre at Southern Cross University in Australia, points to recent studies looking into the potential utility of sea cucumber compounds for treatments like anti-cancer and anti-coagulant drugs. ”So it’s important because of that, that we maintain healthy populations of breeding animals because we are going to need them in the future for drugs,” Purcell says.

Around the world, fishing pressure for the pharmaceutical industry, and to a greater degree the food industry, are causing problems for sea cucumbers. “Worldwide we are already seeing a lot of documented local extinctions. We know from surveys now that in some places species have just disappeared. Maybe a few of them are still there but certainly not in populations that could be considered biologically or ecologically viable,” Purcell says.

Stronger national regulation of sea cucumber harvests would help, he says. “If fishing was restricted to fewer and just mature adults, fishers could make a living whilst conserving a renewable resource for the future,” he says.

He also calls for international regulation of the sea cucumber trade. In August 2019, CITES member countries accepted a proposal to include the first three species of sea cucumber on Appendix II, with a 12-month delay in implementation. To trade the three species internationally, governments will have to issue export permits after ensuring that the trade will not impair the survival of the species in the wild. Purcell said he applauds the move and thinks CITES could consider adding other species to encourage better fisheries management. Yet achieving CITES protection is not simple. Without good field data on wild population numbers, it’s difficult to demonstrate the extent of decline, a requirement for CITES listing.

Madagascar’s fisheries management undoubtedly needs drastic improvement if the sea cucumber fishery is to stand any chance of recovery, says Adrian Levrel, an independent marine and coastal resources management specialist based in Madagascar. Currently there is no official closure or quota system in place to limit the amount of sea cucumbers exported. The lack of stock assessment figures impedes the development of a national management plan.

Moreover, some of the measures that do exist don’t account for the biology or biological diversity of Malagasy sea cucumbers, Levrel says. By way of example he points to a law, Arrêté nº 525, that defines the minimum size of sea cucumbers that can be legally harvested or sold: 11 cm (4.3 inches) when fresh, and 8 cm (3.1 inches) when dried. “What these restrictions don’t take into account, however, is that we have around 30 species of sea cucumber that are commercially harvested here in Madagascar, which can vary greatly in length once they have reached maturity,” Levrel says. “This law is largely ineffective, as it fails in particular to protect the immature individuals of the most targeted species, including Holothuria scabra.”

Sea cucumbers being processed for sale in northwest Madagascar. Image by Chris Scarffe / © Chris Scarffe Film and Photography.

Even if the government were to develop a rigorous management plan, one that fishers like Tahiry bought into, protecting such a profitable resource is difficult in Madagascar. Opportunists with no interest in a long-term viable fishery are always drawn to black markets where the risk of prosecution is low and the financial rewards are large.

Silvy Raharimalala is the director of fisheries for Diana, Madagascar’s northernmost region, where Nosy Be is located. Raharimalala describes the difficulty she and her colleagues face enforcing the law. “The numbers of sea cucumbers have declined a lot since I first started in 1995, but we simply don’t have the resources, manpower or finances to effectively patrol our waters,” she says. Madagascar, the world’s fourth-largest island, has a coastline of more than 4,800 kilometers (3,000 miles) and one of the biggest marine territories in the Indian Ocean. “Even if we get tip-offs of illegal activity we can’t compete with the big bosses who finance these operations. Their boats are faster than ours, so as soon as they see us they disappear,” Raharimalala says.

Corruption is another factor, according to Ndranto Razakamanarina, president of Alliance Voahary Gasy, a network of Malagasy environmental groups. “Madagascar is one of the most corrupt countries in the world and it happens in every sector and at every level,” he says. In 2019, Transparency International listed Madagascar at 158th out of 180 countries when it comes to public sector corruption.

“In order to preserve the species, it’s forbidden to fish for sea cucumbers with dive materials. Unfortunately, however, the laws here are not applied to everyone and it is only low-level people who are doing their best to survive who are being arrested,” Razakamanarina says angrily. “Those who are sitting up at the top tables of this illegal trade are going unprosecuted … The government care more for their foreign investors than they care about fishing communities.”

I spoke with “Hery,” an environmental activist who requested a pseudonym for fear of retaliation. He said he has seen firsthand the scale of the illegal sea cucumber trade. “It’s a huge operation and it’s just not sea cucumbers that are being smuggled out,” he says. “You’ve got shark fins, you have tortoises, you have eels and hardwood.”

Transshipment at sea, as the practice of moving cargoes between ships offshore is called, can be legal. But it is often a means to circumnavigate fisheries laws. It and other illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing practices not only deplete Madagascar’s waters but also deprive the country of taxable revenue and fishers of vital incomes.

Sea cucumbers being processed, before sale to local buyers. Image by Michel Strogoff / © Chris Scarffe Film and Photography.

Despite all those challenges, there are some glimmers of hope. One is community sea cucumber aquaculture programs in a few villages in southwestern Madagascar. These are attempting to provide a new form of income for traditional small-scale fishers and to alleviate pressure on local wild sea cucumbers and other marine organisms. Having begun in 2008, organizers say the pens are finally starting to produce well. Even so, the aquaculture model will require careful development and expansion if it is to play a significant role nationally. (One of the main organizers, the NGO Blue Ventures, is an occasional client of mine.)

Another glimmer came earlier this year, when the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fishing announced that it had received funding from the World Bank to carry out a resource stock assessment of sea cucumbers in Malagasy waters. If the COVID-19 pandemic permits it to happen this year, as planned, it would represent the first step toward drafting a national management plan for the sea cucumber fishery. And that would represent a first step toward recovery for Madagascar’s sea cucumbers.

Meanwhile, fishers like Tahiry continue to risk their lives by diving farther and deeper offshore to find the last remaining wild populations of these sought-after echinoderms.

Holothuria fuscogilva, one of the first three species of sea cucumber to be included on Appendix II of CITES, which regulates international trade. Image by Frédéric Ducarme via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Banner image: Sea cucumbers await processing in northwest Madagascar. Image by Michel Strogoff / © Chris Scarffe Film and Photography.

Chris Scarffe is an independent filmmaker, photographer and writer who specializes in environmental and wildlife related content. See his work at www.chrisscarffe.com.

Citations:

Eriksson, H., Österblom, H., Crona, B., Troell, M., Andrew, N., Wilen, J., and Folke, C. (2015). Contagious exploitation of marine resources. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 13(8), 435-440. doi:10.1890/140312

Purcell, S. W., Mercier, A., Conand, C., Hamel, J., Toral-Granda, M. V., Lovatelli, A., and Uthicke, S. (2011). Sea cucumber fisheries: Global analysis of stocks, management measures and drivers of overfishing. Fish and Fisheries, 14(1), 34-59. doi:10.1111/j.1467-2979.2011.00443.x

Purcell, S., Conand, C., Uthicke, S., and Byrne, M. (2016). Ecological roles of exploited sea cucumbers. Oceanography and Marine Biology – An Annual Review, 367-386. doi:10.1201/9781315368597-8

Kiew, P. L., and Don, M. M. (2011). Jewel of the seabed: Sea cucumbers as nutritional and drug candidates. International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition, 63(5), 616-636. doi:10.3109/09637486.2011.641944

Khotimchenko, Y. (2018). Pharmacological potential of sea cucumbers. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 19(5), 1342. doi:10.3390/ijms19051342

Schneider, K., Silverman, J., Woolsey, E., Eriksson, H., Byrne, M., and Caldeira, K. (2011). Potential influence of sea cucumbers on coral reef CaCO3budget: A case study at one tree reef. Journal of Geophysical Research, 116(G4). doi:10.1029/2011jg001755

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