The Philippines is the world’s second largest producer of dried sea cucumber products, after Indonesia.

To generate scientific basis and development technologies to help manage the industry, three constituent universities of the UP System are leading a three-year (2007-2010) research program on sea cucumber resource management and culture.

With funding from the Department of Science and Technology, the UP Diliman Marine Science Institute (UPD-MSI), the UP Visayas College of Arts and Sciences (UPV-CAS), and the UP Mindanao College of Science and Mathematics (UPMin-CSM) have embarked on interrelated and complementary research projects that will study commercially-viable sea cucumber species—their populations, habitats, and reproductive behavior—which will, in turn, be used to improve the culture of these species and for stock enhancement.

In addition to DoST, the UP researchers are supported by the Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Agricultural Research, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research through WorldFish and the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC).

The export of dried sea cucumber products is a multi-million peso industry, but it is largely unknown to the Filipino market, except to the Filipino-Chinese community and coastal villages. These products are among the most important marine products in China, Japan, and Korea.

Apart from economic reasons, the bid to save sea cucumbers also stems from the fact that they play major roles in the marine environment. Sea cucumbers feed on decayed organic matter on the seabed and stir up sediment as they move, providing a healthy habitat for other marine organisms.

Dr. Marie Antonette Juinio-Meñez, UPD-MSI professor and project leader of the Luzon component, said their studies focus mainly on sandfish Holothuria scabra as it is the only tropical sea cucumber that has been cultured.

However, one of the objectives of the program is to develop the culture of other commercially-viable species given that there are over 40 of them in the country.

Recently, they produced the first batch of juvenile Stichopus horrens, which is a highly-value coral reef associated species.

According to Juinio-Meñez, the UPD-MSI project has scaled-up production of H. scabra at its Bolinao Marine Laboratory in Pangasinan and has established the first pilot sea cucumber sea ranching sites for this species, where over 10,000 hatchery-produced juveniles have been released at each site.