Community farms feed families
SEA CUCUMBER STATISTICS
Blue Ventures,
headquartered in London, includes the charity, Blue Ventures Conservation, and the company Blue Ventures Expeditions, which runs the ecotourism programme.
Dr Alasdair Harris, 35, was educated at Edinburgh University then
“More than 50 per cent of farmers are
women, and close to 50 per cent have leader positions either within
the village savings committees or the village associations
”
Oxford. Alongside his work with Blue Ventures, he is a visiting post-doctoral researcher at the
University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, a member of the
World Commission on Protected Areas, a member of the Marine Stewardship Council’s Stakeholder Council, and a
technical adviser to the United Nations Environment Programme’s Convention on
Migratory Species Secretariat.
Sea cucumbers are bottom- dwelling echinoderms – relatives of starfish – that once littered ocean floors throughout the tropics. Much like a garden earthworm, they play a crucial role in recycling nutrients in sediments, forming the bedrock of complex marine food chains.
Sea cucumbers have been consumed in Asia for centuries, prized for their
purported medicinal properties and
touted as edible aphrodisiacs once reserved for the wealthy. China’s
economic boom has fuelled skyrocketing demand.
leader positions either within the village savings committees or the village associations.’ In this traditional society, women don’t fish on the boats. But aquacul-
ture appeals to them more because they ‘glean’ – walking on the reef at low tide, often with their children, either spearing octopus or picking up shells and sea cucumbers. ‘I think that’s why this has been quite an easy transition for the wom-
en,’ says Fran.
www.fishfarmer-magazine.com What will also appeal to the women is the
increased income from their efforts, money that helps pay for school fees, clothes and food. People might have been suspicious of sea cu- cumber rearing in the early days but now they can see the tangible rewards of their labour, the challenge for Blue Ventures is to keep up with the demand for farms. FF
So prized are sea cucumbers that highly trained security specialists are sometimes recruited, particularly by the Chinese, to protect their farms bordering Russia from poachers.
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