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Editorial

This is the 25th issue and I wish you a very good and fruitful 2007. I must thank all of the many regular and new contributors who helped to keep the Beche-de-Mer Information Bulletin a very high quality publication, as well as the dedicated SPC Fisheries Information and Publication Sections’ staff who work hard to maintain its quality. The numerous abstracts presented here prove that holothurians continue to attract considerable research in different fields such as biology, fishery management, and aquaculture. The bulletin serves well its goal of linking partners who have an interest in sea cucumbers, worldwide.

I draw, once again, your attention to the database of all articles and abstracts published in the bulletin to date. This has been put together by SPC’s Fisheries Information Section, and is available on SPC’s website at: http://www.spc.int/coastfish/news/search_bdm.asp. The database includes around 600 article and abstract titles that can be searched by title, author name(s), scientific name, region or country. Each search result is presented with a hyperlink that allows downloading in pdf format. I also point out that the bulletin is a publication with the ISSN 1025-4943.

This issue begins with the abstracts of oral presentations and posters from the 12th International Echinoderm Conference in Durham (USA), and includes a photo of the sea cucumber scientists who were present. It is followed by an article by K.M. Al-Rashdi, which is the first contribution on the sea cucumber fishery in Oman in this publication. The socioeconomics and management objectives of a three-year sea cucumber project in the western Indian Ocean — which was first presented by Conand et al. in BDM #23 — have been discussed by the team and are now detailed by M. De la Torre-Castro et al. I. Alfonso et al. describe a toxin isolated from Isostichopus badionotus — a sea cucumber species found in Cuba — processing’s byproducts that has been successfully tested for skin treatment. M. del Mar Otero-Villanueva and V.N. Ut evaluate the sea cucumber fisheries around the Phu Quoc Archipelago (Vietnam) and highlight the need for co-management programmes between countries. In issue #24 of this publication, V. Toral presented an FAO-Darwin Institution programme project aimed at producing fact sheets and an identification guide for commercial sea cucumber species. She presents in this issue the first outcomes of this project. There is still a considerable amount of information missing, either on the biology of some of the commercially important sea cucumber species that have been listed, or on their geographical distribution. Toral makes a call to her fellow colleagues to help her complete the information required.

We continue to publish observations of sea cucumber natural spawning. In this issue we present detailed observations and photos of Stichopus chloronotus, which is described here for La Reunion for the first time by Barrère.

Chantal Conand  

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