Sea cucumbers are echinoderms (Echinodermata) that are widely distributed throughout the world’s oceans. They live on or near the ocean floor and are often buried beneath it, making them easily vulnerable to high levels of fishing. For centuries, sea cucumbers have been consumed as a luxury food item and used as medicine in Asian countries. In Vietnam, sea cucumbers have been widely exploited for traditional food and medicinal purposes as well as for aquariums, which has led to a rapid decline in their natural populations, thereby threatening the sustainability of sea cucumber fisheries. Kien Giang province is located in the Mekong Delta region of southwestern Vietnam. Nam Du and Tien Hai islands belong to Kien Giang’s coastal water and are biodiversity hotspots that support many different important marine fisheries, including a high abundance of sea cucumbers. However, several species of sea cucumbers have been commercially harvested in these islands subsequently leading to overexploitation and a decline in the number of sea cucumber species especially high-value commercial stocks. Therefore, this investigation aimed to assess the present situation of sea cucumber species to provide useful information for planning sustainable sea cucumber management initiatives that could protect and control exploitation of sea cucumber resource in Kien Giang’s coastal water.
The investigation was performed to assess the status of sea cucumber species composition in the Southwest sea of Kien Giang province. Six field trips for sampling natural sea cucumber population were conducted in Nam Du and Tien Hai Islands from March to December, 2018. It was found that fourteen species with low- and medium-value species were most commonly collected, which belong to two families (Holothuridea and Stichopodidea). Holothuridea involved three genera with eight species such as Actinopyga echinites. Pearsonothuria graeffei, Holothuria atra, H. fuscogilva, H. nobilis, H. leucospilota, H. impatiens and H. scabra, of which H. leucospilota was most dominant (27.39%) followed by P. graeffei (17.20%) and H. impatiens (9.87%), and other species accounted for less than 1%. For Stichopodidea, only one Stichopus genus was identified, including six species, namely, Stichopus variegatus occupied 24.20% and the five other species (S. chloronotus, S. naso, S. horrens, S. hermanni and S. monotuberculatus), which represented between 0.32% and 6.37%. These species was found at water depth from 2 m to 25 m. The sizes of these species in term of length varied from 9 to 47 cm and their individual weights were between 16 and 1854 g. However, the high-value species such as H. nobilis, H. fuscogilva and Thelenota ananas had been abundant in the past 10 years that were not found in the present study. This indicates these sea cucumber species were intensively exploited resulting in the drastic depletion of high-value stocks in the study area.