Residents of Mafia Island in Tanzania don’t really eat sea cucumber; they call it jongoo bahari, or “ocean millipede” in Swahili. But sea cucumbers are a prized delicacy in East Asia, where demand has fueled a black market for the spiny sea creatures, Mongabay’s Ashoka Mukpo reported in May.
A kilogram of dried sea cucumbers can fetch hundreds of dollars, which is why in many coastal areas, including in Tanzania, poaching has forced them to the brink of extinction, Mukpo wrote.
Mafia Island is a tourism destination for diving and snorkeling, well-known for whale shark tours. However, it also suffers from overfishing, which is driving fishers farther out to sea to catch enough fish. The island’s sea cucumber population collapsed in the 1990s following the arrival of Chinese traders in the 1970s and a booming trade in echinoderms, the group that includes sea cucumbers, starfish and sea urchins.
The decline in the sea cucumber population prompted the government to ban exports from the Tanzanian mainland in 2003. But trade continued from Mafia, which falls under the semiautonomous government of the nearby island of Zanzibar, so middlemen bought illegally harvested sea cucumbers there, Mukpo reported.
In the late 2010s, amid increasing demand and prices, the Tanzanian government decided to regulate trade by encouraging offshore sea cucumber farming operations.
Waziri Mpogo was the first to open such an underwater sea cucumber “ranch” near Mafia Island. He said farming sea cucumbers can help increase their population and provide income for locals.
Unlike other farmers, Mpogo doesn’t enclose his sea cucumbers with a fence, allowing them to grow “free-range.” He said it’s better for them to be part of a thriving ecosystem, connected to the rest of the ocean, with sea turtles and fish freely swimming in his ranch’s seagrass meadow.
“[Sea cucumbers] can’t be domesticated like sheep or camels or hens,” Mpogo told Mukpo. “They need human protection, but if you restrict them to one place and fence it, you deprive them of important aspects of life. In some stages they need sun rays, and in others they need to be in the deep ocean.”
Among the five species on his ranch is the endangered pineapple sea cucumber (Thelenota ananas), considered one of the most valuable species in East Africa.
While Mpogo has the permit to farm and harvest the sea cucumbers, he’s waiting for final approval to export. For Mpogo, sea cucumbers are a labor of love, but he still needs a return on his investment. A kilo of the sea cucumbers can fetch $250 to $350, depending on the species.
“My dream is to make this project the best in Africa so that more researchers come here to help us improve it,” he said. “I don’t want to see the fish or sea cucumbers drying up.”
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Banner image of Waziri Mpogo harvesting sea cucumbers at his ranch off Mafia Island. Image by Ashoka Mukpo/Mongabay.
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