Alaska commercial harvest begins Monday for sea cucumbers
Published Sunday, October 5, 2008
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Stumble It!KETCHIKAN, Alaska -- Divers are getting ready for the beginning of the commercial sea cucumber season in southeast Alaska with the lowest quota in several years.
The commercial season starts Monday morning.
Sea cucumbers are also known as sea slugs. They're echinoderms with an elongated body and leathery skin.
They're a popular food in Asia.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game set a guideline harvest of just more than 1.1 million pounds for 18 harvest areas.
That's down about 19 percent from last season and 24 percent lower than the 2005-2006 season.
The reason for the drop in sea cucumbers isn't known. Biologist Marc Pritchett says there's an assumption that it's connected to sea otter predation.
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yum
The fertility of sea-cukes such as Stichopus Californicus depends on many different factors, but when were harvesting them in WA-state we figured out how to replant them with a tremendous increase in fertility by performing some "old indian magic" on the cutting table aboard the boat... there's a symbiotic biochemical relationship between cukes and other unrelated species in the natural breeding grounds.
....if ya wanna know exactly how this is done I can demonstrate the technique if you're really seriously interested.
Should we start slaughtering sea otters then?
(some people seemed to think that kind of "wildlife management" was going to help the moose populations)
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