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Sea cucumber management strategies: challenges and opportunities in a developing country context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2019

Merrill Baker-Médard Open the ORCID record for Merrill Baker-Médard [Opens in a new window]  and
Kristina Natalia Ohl
Merrill Baker-Médard*
Affiliation:
Middlebury College – Environmental Studies, 531 College Street, Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Middlebury, VT 05753, USA
Kristina Natalia Ohl
Affiliation:
Middlebury College – Environmental Studies, 531 College Street, Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Middlebury, VT 05753, USA
*
Author for correspondence: Merrill Baker-Médard, Email: [email protected]
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Summary

Sea cucumbers play a critical role in maintaining healthy marine ecosystems. Sea cucumbers are also a key source of income for millions of small-scale fishers worldwide. The lucrative nature of this industry has led to severe reductions in sea cucumber populations in numerous regions globally. A large proportion of sea cucumber fisheries are located in developing countries, which present unique challenges to management, including addressing highly decentralized methods of extraction and processing, limited economic and technological resources for governance and, in many cases, a high dependency on sea cucumbers as a primary source of income for small-scale coastal fishers. In this review, we review the benefits and challenges of seven categories of sea cucumber management strategies used globally in developing countries, including gear restrictions, size and weight limits, effort and catch controls, temporal closures, area closures, value chain licensing and territorial use rights in fisheries. We conclude that sea cucumber management in developing countries could benefit from focusing regulatory solutions on narrowed parts of the value chain, coupling production-based management strategies with processing and export regulations and providing avenues for local fishers to inform policy at the local, regional and national levels.

Keywords

community-based managementfishing cooperativesGlobal Southmanagement strategiesmarine conservationsea cucumbersmall-scale fisheriesvalue chain
Type
Subject Review
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 46 , Issue 4: Thematic Section: Bringing Species and Ecosystems Together with Remote Sensing Tools to Develop New Biodiversity Metrics and Indicators , December 2019 , pp. 267 - 277
Copyright
© Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2019 

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