FAO Fisheries Department

The trouble with sea cucumbers

1-4-2009 

FAO report says overfishing putting sea cukes at risk.

For many in the western world, they're a summer oddity — strange blobs we sometimes see bobbing about on the seafloor beneath us during a day at the beach.

But across Asia, sea cucumbers have long been a staple in peoples' diets, mainly in soups, stews and stir-fries, and demand for this homely undersea animal — cucumber is a misnomer, they're really echinoderms — is high.