DAGUPAN  City scored another first when the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) decided to build  the country’s first ever sea cucumber  hatchery at the 24-hectare National Integrated Fisheries Technology Development Center in Bonuan Binloc.

Dr. Westly Rosario, executive director of the National Fisheries Research Institute, said the project aims to produce juvenile sea cucumber for distribution in various parts of the country to groups of fish farmers that will be engaged in sea ranching.

The project is a collaborative effort between scientists from the BFAR and Australia, New Caledonia and other countries in order to formulate the proper protocol for growing sea cucumber in commercial quantity.

 Some of these foreign among scientists, who are now in the Philippines for the project, will also train fish farmers how to grow sea cucumber, using sea ranching as a method.

Dagupan City, which has its Asian Fisheries Training Center, will be the hub for the continuing research for sea cucumber, Rosario added.

Rosario said that to date, the Philippines and Indonesia both archipelagic countries are the world’s leading exporters of sea cucumber which is selling at the rate of $l,000 per kilo in the U.S., Singapore and China.

Sea cucumber is very much in demand as food condiments and as raw materials for pharmaceuticals, he said.

But Rosario said quantity of sea cucumber in the Philippines is very limited as these are still coming from the wild.

At the same time, he noted that the population of sea cucumber is continuously depleting because of unsustainable extraction, where fishermen catch the specie while still in very small sizes.—LM

Share your Comments or Reactions

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments