This is a training video made for Pacific Island artisanal fishers. It shows methods for postharvest processing of sea cucumbers. The video was produced as part of a research aid project funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR project FIS-2010-096), within the Department of Foreign Affairs, Australia. Hard copies (DVD discs) with voice-overs in local languages will be distributed to coastal villages in Fiji, Tonga and Kiribati.
Sea cucumbers have been fished in the Pacific Islands for more than 150 years. They are processed, using artisanal methods, into a dried form called bêche-de-mer and exported to China. Harvesting and selling sea cucumbers gives rural households vital sources of income for basic needs, health and education. In many Pacific Island villages, alternative livelihood activities are limited and fishing sea cucumbers offers one of the few income sources.
Research shows that a majority of Pacific Island fishers have had no information support to understand how to process the animals correctly. As a result, the quality of dried products is often poor and fishers get inferior prices. This problem contributes to a need to fish large quantities of sea cucumbers to meet economic needs and wastes the potential value of these resources for national economies.
The goal of the video is to help Pacific Island fishers to make better income from the sea cucumbers that they collect and reduce the wastage of potential income and food from these aquatic resources. The video and project discourages excessive fishing, since these resources are vulnerable to over-exploitation, and we do not encourage fishers to harvest sea cucumbers. Rather, the project hopes to improve postharvest processing of catches that would be made by existing fishers. By spending more time on value-adding of the fishery harvests and gaining a better income from selling the dried sea cucumbers for export, fishers might need to fish less frequently. Whether, or not, this occurs is being determined by 'before-and-after' socio-economic surveys as part of the research component of the project.
The video was made by Southern Cross University, Australia, through its National Marine Science Centre. Neither the funding organisation, commissioned organisation nor partner organisations that produced this DVD have any financial gain or commercial interests in the sea cucumber industry.
The video closely follows methods presented in a training manual, which can be downloaded free at:
aciar.gov.au/publication/cop026