Sea cucumbers: innovation for the challenges of mariculture in Santa Catarina
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52945/rac.v38i3.2214Keywords:
Holothuria (Halodeima) grisea, Isostichopus badionotus, Parathyone braziliensis, sustainability, innovation in aquacultureAbstract
Santa Catarina is the leading producer of farmed mollusks in Brazil, particularly oysters, mussels, and scallops. However, the sector faces challenges such as reduced production, legal uncertainty regarding cultivation areas, harmful algal blooms, and increasing contamination of coastal waters. These factors reinforce the need for sustainable diversification of mariculture. In this context, sea cucumbers emerge as a promising alternative, despite still being little known in Brazil. These organisms have great economic and ecological importance worldwide and have recently been studied for their biology, ecology, reproduction, and cultivation on the Santa Catarina coast. Three native species were identified, two of which are commercially valuable and already threatened by unregulated harvesting. The larval and post-larval cycles were completed in the laboratory, resulting, for the first time in Brazil, in the experimental production of juveniles of two species. These advances pave the way for sustainable sea cucumber production and innovation in Santa Catarina's mariculture, in addition to contributing to the conservation of these valuable and endangered marine invertebrates.
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