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From Chantal Conand
Twenty years ago when I accepted to start the SPC Beche-de-mer
Information
Bulletin, I was far from thinking that holothurian fisheries,
although important
for some countries, would become a subject of worldwide interest.
They have
evolved progressively from the traditional tropical Indo-Pacific
activities,
to more industrial fisheries in most countries where the resource
has been
found. During these years, the needs and possibilities, via
Internet, to
share the originally scarce information have exploded! The SPC Beche-de-mer Information Bulletin bulletin developed and is presently very
well
known, read and used for references.
I am very thankful to SPC’s Marine Resources Division director,
officers
and staff, with a special mention to Aymeric Desurmont, for their
continuous efforts to edit, translate and disseminate the issues
with
enthusiasm and on time. It has been a pleasure for me to be a part
of this
long-lasting collaboration.
Many thanks to all the contributors; this bulletin is yours! You
were
mostly from fishery or biological fields at the beginning, but now
the
fields are very different and specialised and include, for example,
taxonomy, genetics, and cellular biology to pharmaceutical uses.
During these years, I have tried to encourage young scientists to
publish
their observations, helping them in any way that I could, when they
were
preparing their first contribution on a fishery or on a country.
Despite the
fact that the bulletin is not a refereed journal (which in the
present rush
for indexed publications discourages some writers), the
contributions are
always cited and the general opinion is that the bulletin is very
useful.
I finally thank Igor Eeckhaut who, notwithstanding his many
responsibilities, has accepted to co-edit this issue and become the
future
editor. I am sure that he will help to develop this bulletin
according to
the wishes of the different contributors and readers interested in
this
particular fishery, which now deserves more international attention,
but
urgently needs management.
Chantal Conand
Brief tribute to Chantal Conand,
outgoing Editor
When I was
a junior officer with the Fiji Fisheries Division in the 1980s, the
boss asked me to draft a briefing paper on the state of the
beche-de-mer industry for Cabinet. Worries were being expressed at
the rapid escalation in the number of companies applying for export
licences. Cabinet needed to know how much fishing was actually
taking place and what level of exports could be sustained in this
hitherto smallscale fishery.
I talked
to old hands at the Fisheries Division, I talked to fishermen, I
talked to exporters and I talked to the Customs Department. I even
went to the library and looked up documents from the previous
century, and was able to build a picture of the history of the
beche-de-mer fishery in Fiji and put the latest spike of
exploitation into some sort of context. But I wasn’t able to include
much science. There just didn’t seem to be much published about
tropical sea cucumbers, particularly from a fisheries management
perspective.
My Cabinet
paper had plenty of local information in it, but didn’t provide much
guidance about sustainability, about growth rates, spawning seasons,
preferred habitats, or what the population density should be for a
healthy natural stock.
Chantal
Conand’s work came as a godsend. Through her FAO Technical Report,
and through the 1988 SPC Inshore Fisheries Resources Workshop, she
communicated her own seminal work on holothurians together with an
authoritative overview of everything else that was known, and likely
to be of value in managing the exploitation of these species, at the
time. As a result, my next briefing was greatly improved.
That 1988
SPC workshop also led to the setting up of a number of Special
Interest Groups — networks of experts on particular fishery
resources of particular interest to Pacific Island fisheries
managers — but for which there seemed to be a general scarcity of
information. These networks were facilitated by the publication of a
six-monthly (or so) bulletin, which would provide both an
opportunity for Pacific Island fisheries scientists to disseminate
their own practical knowledge to each other, and for research in the
rest of the world to be distilled for the benefit of Pacific Island
fisheries managers.
This
Beche-de-mer Information Bulletin is one such Special
Interest Group (SIG), and Chantal, as SIG coordinator and voluntary
editor-in-chief, has been both stalwart and inspirational in leading
its production since 1990. SPC, the Pacific Island fisheries
community, and holothurian research in general, owe her a large vote
of thanks.
This will
be the 28th issue of the Bulletin. A measure of its relevance
is the fact that it has grown from 12, to more than 50 pages during
the course of its life so far, and it has found a much wider
readership on the worldwide web. It is no longer just a Pacific
resource, but an international resource.
We wish
Chantal all the very best for the future, and we’re very glad to be
able to continue to call upon her wisdom during the transitional
period as she co-edits this issue of the Bulletin together with the
future editor, Igor Eeckhaut.
Dr Tim
Adams
Director,
Marine Resources Division
Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC)
BP D5, 98848 Noumea Cedex
New Caledonia
tima@spc.int
Editorial
When Chantal asked me to take over as the scientific
editor of the SPC Beche-de-Mer Information Bulletin, I was
first astonished because many contributors of the bulletin were much
more involved in the biology of holothurians than I was. I was
indeed first interested in echinoderm biology and in the ecology of
organisms living in association with them. For 10 years now, I have
been involved in sea cucumber aquaculture projects, which has
allowed me to discover another world, different but very exiting too,
where science interacts with socioeconomic issues. On reflection, I
am really proud to take up the challenge and I hope to maintain,
with the help of contributors, the quality and diversity of
articles.
This issue begins with a summary of the FAO
Fisheries Technical Paper “Sea cucumbers. A global review on fishery
and trade”, now in press, following the FAO International Workshop
on the Sustainable Use and Management of Sea Cucumber Fisheries
(Toral-Granda et al.).
Friedman et al. report on the development of
a management plan for Yap’s sea cucumber fishery. Yap State is one
of four states that make up the Federated States of Micronesia. The
status of sea cucumber fisheries and a management plan for Saudi
Arabian sea cucumbers are discussed by Hasan.
Eeckhaut
et al. discuss how the first sea
cucumber-based trade company in Madagascar was recently started. New
processing methods used in the Toliara area of Madagascar are also
reported on by Lavitra et al.
Mulochau
and Conand inventoried the sea
cucumbers of the Glorieuses archipelago. Today, these islands are
nature reserves, which are useful for comparing anthropogenic
effects on sea cucumber populations.
Aydin gives information on Turkey’s sea cucumber
fisheries, which is rapidly expanding and is already exporting more
than 70 metric tonnes per year. Ruffez explains the
dramatic situation of scuba divers in Viet Nam who catch sea
cucumbers. Some fishers dive as much as five times a day, each dive
lasting more than 30 minutes, which leads to serious illness.
Results from experiments testing the influence of
commercial diets on Holothuria scabra var. versicolor
are reported on by Giraspy et al.
Purcell et al. note that there are no good tags for mark-recapture studies on
tropical sea cucumbers. The authors estimate the effectiveness of
passive induced transponder (PIT) tags on two species of sea
cucumber.
Many abstracts on holothurians have been
published recently. Two PhD theses concerning sea cucumbers were
defended in 2008, and include “Impact of removal — A case study on
the ecological role of the commercially important sea cucumber
Holothuria scabra (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea) in Moreton Bay,
Australia” presented by Svea Mara Wolkenhauer (CSIRO – Australia)
and “Characterization, control and optimization of the processes
involved in the postmetamorphic development of the edible
holothuroid Holothuria scabra (Jaeger, 1833) (Holothuroidea:
Echinodermata)” by Thierry Lavitra (University of Mons-Hainaut,
Belgium).
The database of all articles and
abstracts published in the bulletin to date were put together by
SPC’s Fisheries Information Section, and are available on SPC’s
website at:
http://www.spc.int/coastfish/news/search_bdm.asp. Each
search result is presented with a hyperlink that allows downloading
in pdf format.
Igor Eeckhaut
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