Sea cucumbers (Vietnamese people often call “dia bien” or “dot dot”) are cylindrical invertebrate animals that live in water environments. They are found on the waters of Japan, Spain and South Pacific.

In Vietnam, people have long known some species of sea cucumbers following:  mit sea cucumbers, mit hoa sea cucumbers, black sea cucumbers, soft black sea cucumbers and white sea cucumbers, which appeared early in the waters of Vietnam such as Vung Tau, Con Dao, Binh Thuan, Ninh Thuan… Currently, this resources become very few because it has been exploited massively. Sea cucumbers eat decaying organic matter and algae. Since the ancient time, Chinese people have listed this animal in the group of “eight precious dishes” including  fin, bird nests, abalone, sea cucumbers… The Chineses also insist that sea cucumbers have pharmaceutical values such as strengthening vigor, curing diabetes, edema and cancer (being used much in remedies for cancers). Every 100g of dried sea cucumbers contains 76g protein. It is five times as much as lean pork and three and half times as much as beef.

Sea cucumbers or holothurian also have many valuable amino acids such as lysine, proline… especially an antidote can nullify the heavy metals entering the body through ingestion… Decades ago, Australia successfully farmed and exported sand sea cucumbers to the world. With the advanced technologies, Australian scientists have made sand sea cucumbers breed in the houses or in the ponds and the weight of baby sea cucumbers is 500g. Recently, the World Fish Center of Australia has give the Research Institute for Aquaculture No. 3 (RIA 3) of Vietnam the technologies for farming sand sea cucumbers. The project is being implemented in Khanh Hoa province.

Sand sea cucumbers chosen are the ones caught in natural environment. They are healthy without gazes with their weight at about 250g per one. They have been farmed with the density of 1 sea cucumber per 1 m² in ponds or nets floating on the sea. Water environment for farming sea cucumbers has salinity of 2.5%.

During 4-8 months of farming, stimulus methods have been used to help sea cucumbers breeding. RIA 3 has also co-operated with some local people to expand sea cucumbers farming in ponds. Mr. Huynh Ngoc Hai, a farming pond owner said that the price of dried sea cucumbers is more than 40 USD per kilo.

Domestic demand for sea cucumbers is very large while markets in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore are in similar situation.

Source: Binh Thuan Newspaper