Sea cucumber has a potential for culture development because of the following advantages:
The sea cucumber is low in the food chain. It digests mainly on sessile diatomes, organic detritus, small molluscs, copepods, and marine seaweed.
The culture method is not the capitial-intensive system. It requires low capital investment.
The operation does not require high technical input and management skill.
The operation can be amenable to small-scale part-time operation.
These advantages make the sea cucumber culture suitable for costal communities which majority of the resdidents are poor, and limited resources of investment,
Culture of sea cucumber has been developed in Kolaka, Kendari Southeast Sulawesi with encouraging results. The practices used in Sopura bay Kolaka is simple. The sea cucumber size about 10cm collected by fishermen from the natural grounds are kept in net enclosures. The enclosure size is about 12.0×12.0m made of polyethylene of 0.4–0.6mm mesh size. The net is attached to bamboo or wooden posts driven into the substratum at 1.2m depth with 50–70cm above the ground at 1.5m interval (Fig. 2).
The seed size about 10cm in length costs around Rp100 per piece. Stocking density for the initial stocking size of 10cm is between 4–8 pcs/sqm depending on the availability of the natural food and the management level.
Juvenile sea cucumber size between 2.5–5.0cm ingests mainly sessile diatoms and organic detritus. The main food of older sea cucumbers are small molluscs, copepods, sessile diatoms and marine seaweed. Chicken manure is used as supplementary feed by the farmers operating in Sopura bay, Kolaka, but rice bran, fish flour or compound feed will give better result.
Shelters such as tree branch or loose rocks should be provided to create a good living environment and encourage growth of the natural food.
The sea cucumber will grow to marketable size between 15– 30cm within six months. Only sea cucumber size above 20cm will be harvested. The production at present is around 4 mt/ha/yr(dry weight). The price ex-farm is around Rp 17 500/kg for beche-de-mer size between 20–30 pcs/kg (dry weight).
