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Unless you are an Asian gourmet it may be difficult to get excited about
sea cucumbers. But in the Galapagos Islands the fate of this lowly marine
invertebrate is the linchpin of a crisis that conservationists believe could
threaten the second largest marine reserve in the world. At stake is the
wildlife for which Galapagos has been famous since Charles Darwin set foot
on the islands in 1835. The issue pits local and international conservationists
and tour operators against a small number of wealthy businessmen supplying
specialised Asian markets.

The dried flesh of sea cucumbers, known as trepang or beche-de-mer (literally
sea grub), is very popular in Asia, especially Taiwan and Japan, where
it is used to thicken and flavour soups. Related to the starfish, sea
cucumbers have a soft, wormlike body and range from a few centimetres to
90 centimetres in length. Unlike starfish, however, they have no arms but
use a cluster of tube-like feet around their mouth to gather food. To defend
themselves, sea cucumbers can eject their viscera and parts of their respiratory
system through the anus to distract attackers. They later regenerate the
missing parts. But these defences are useless against human collectors,
who have a history of exploiting sea cucumber populations to extinction
very quickly. This has happened in the Solomon Islands, the Cook Islands
and Fiji.

As sea cucumbers were depleted in one area, the dealers looked to other
parts of the Pacific where they could buy supplies. Currently, they are
exploiting local populations of sea cucumbers in places such as Micronesia,
Indonesia, the Philippines, Oregon and Alaska. Harvesting of the Isostichopus
fuscus sea cucumber first started along the coast of mainland Ecuador in
1988, but by 1991 it was virtually wiped out. Then a clandestine fishery
started up in 1992 in the Galapagos Islands, a thousand kilometres to the
west. When it was discovered Rodrigo Borja, then president of Ecuador, banned
the exploitation of sea cucumbers anywhere in Ecuador’s territorial waters.
Now, in response to pressure from local business interests, spurred by demand
from Asia, the National Fisheries Development Council in Ecuador is pressing
the government to revoke the 1992 ban.

Before making a decision, Ecuador’s current president, Sixto Duran,
is consulting ‘all interested parties’. These include those who wish to
exploit the resource as well as the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos,
the Galapagos National Park Service and international organisations such
as the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

Earthworms of the sea

Little is known about the ecology of these slow-moving, almost inert
animals, locally known as pepinos de mar. Nevertheless, sea cucumbers play
an important role in the general ecology of the sea in the Galapagos archipelago.
For example, they help maintain the seabed by sucking up mud and debris
to extract the nutrients. In this way, the sea cucumbers aerate sediments
and recycle nutrients in a similar way to earthworms. And they may also
form important links in marine food chains. They produce vast numbers of
larvae that drift in the sea, forming part of the zooplankton that sustains
a vast array of other animals from crustaceans to fishes, seals and whales.
And the juveniles are eaten by carnivorous arthropods, molluscs and marine
worms.

However, it isn’t just the possible local extinction of sea cucumbers
that is at stake, according to Craig MacFarland, president of the Charles
Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos Islands (CDF). The CDF advises the Ecuadorian
government on conservation in the Galapagos and, through its Charles Darwin
Research Station, facilitates and conducts research in the Galapagos. It
is also responsible for environmental education on the islands, and trains
scientists and resource managers. ‘Reopening the fishery,’ says Mac-Farland,
‘will overturn the Management Plan for the Galapagos Marine Resources Reserve
(GMRR).’ The reserve, created in 1986, covers more than 70 000 square kilometres,
making it the second largest marine reserve in the world.

One of the reasons for the creation of the reserve was to safeguard
the relationship between the waters and marine wildlife in and around the
Galapagos Islands and their famous terrestrial fauna and flora. Many of
the animals, for example, depend on the ocean for food. Since 1961, all
the land not already settled by people – about 90 per cent of the land area
– has been a national park, and is now a World Heritage Site. The GMRR effectively
extended the national park to the waters surrounding the islands.

The management plan for the GMRR, approved by President Borja shortly
before he was ousted in the elections in August 1992, does not prohibit
fishing altogether, but incorporates a zoning scheme. Industrial fishing
is illegal anywhere within the reserve, but various evels of traditional-style
fishing are allowed in some parts of the reserve. Elsewhere all forms of
fishing are banned. Unfortunately, notes MacFarland, the areas with sufficient
sea cucumbers to attract fishermen have been zoned for strict protection.
‘Overturning the management plan,’ says MacFarland, ‘would be the first
step in dismantling the marine reserve completely, and eventually undermining
the entire conservation effort in Galapagos of almost 40 years.’

In April this year the IUCN sent a scientific team to survey a number
of sites between the islands of Fernandina and Isabela in the Galpagos.
The scientists found that fishing in some areas had virtually wiped out
local populations of sea cucumbers, although they could not quantify the
long-term ecological effects. They reported that local fishermen had been
taking sea cucumbers at a rate of 130 000 to 150 000 per day and predicted
that if this continued, populations would be wiped out in the entire archipelago
within three or four years.

Sea cucumbers reproduce by shedding ova and sperm into the sea. Fertilisation,
therefore, depends on there being other sea cucumbers nearby who are shedding
ova and sperm at the same time. This means that maintaining high enough
population densities to support fertilisation is critical to sustainable
fisheries management, notes Carlos de Paco of IUCN’s Costa Rica office.
Judging by evidence from elsewhere in the Pacific, however, it seems doubtful
whether fishing can ever be sustainable. In any case, says de Paco, ‘industrial
and large-scale fisheries are not compatible with the national park’.

Big money

Godfrey Merlen, an English naturalist who has lived in Galapagos for
many years, believes that the authorities would be unable to control the
harvest in an orderly fashion, so the fishing ban should stay. But big money
is at stake – even if the profits last only for a few years. In 1992, the
local fishermen who dived for the sea cucumbers earned between 20 and 30
sucres (about one American cent) for each animal collected, but the middlemen
in mainland Ecuador were reportedly paid $25 per kilogram of dried sea cucumbers
by Asian buyers. Polo Navarro, another naturalist resident in Galapagos,
commented: ‘For these guys it was like the Klondike gold rush. And it has
resulted in big pressure on the government.’

When park rangers investigated the clandestine fishery last year near
Punta Espinosa, on the coast of Fernandina Island, they were dismayed to
find an illegal camp where the men had been processing the sea cucumbers
on shore. Last month, tourist boats were still reporting sea cucumber fishing
and processing in the same area. Fernandina is uninhabited, and one of the
few islands in Galapagos still free of introduced animals or plants, so
the potential for damage by rats, fire ants or other alien organisms is
especially worrying.

Merlen was among those who investigated the sea cucumber fishery, and
helped dismantle the camp. As a result he received threats that his boat
would be destroyed. Chantal Blanton, an American ecologist who had recently
arrived as the new director of the Charles Darwin Research Station, was
also threatened. For a time, she and her staff were barricaded inside the
station offices in Puerto Ayora while an angry crowd banged on the door
with sticks. ‘It was like the wild west,’ recalls Merlen. ‘Men were swaggering
along the streets of Puerto Ayora openly wearing side arms. Most of them
were newcomers from the mainland, rather than the islands, but I never thought
I’d ever see anything like it in Galapagos.’

MacFarland points out that the pattern of sea cucumber exploitation
is to ‘mine out’ an area in a few years and then move on, leaving behind
disrupted and impoverished environments. ‘In absolutely no case anywhere
in the world has a sea cucumber fishery been maintained and sustainable.
Areas in Micronesia fished heavily before and during the Second World War
have still not recovered,’ he says. ‘Neither local nor national fishermen,
fisheries and economies derive much benefit from these non-traditional ventures.
Only the few people with connections to the Asian markets reap a profit.
Local and national aspirations are created, migrations occur, traditional
fisheries are abandoned, and economies collapse. These are true ‘rape and
pillage’ fisheries.’

Earthy language

Blanton has been trying to tackle the issues at their source, by promoting
the education and retraining of local fishermen. She has visited Isabela,
where many of the men live, and talked to them about the dangers of transporting
things like the predatory fire ants to new areas (they are easily carried
in onions, fruits and cardboard boxes). Using earthy language, she explains
the difference between islands with and without introduced animals: ‘I tell
them that Isabela is like a woman with a social disease, while Fernandina
is still a virgin.’

But she speaks compassionately about the harshness of the fishermen’s
lives. ‘They go out in boats that are plain unsafe. I visited the fishermen’s
hotel, and found it filled with wives and children waiting to see if their
menfolk would come back.’ But the bottom line, she says, is that fish stocks
must be allowed to recover. ‘I tell them that if that doesn’t happen, there
will be no fishing at all in a couple of years.’

The Galapagos marine environment is under siege on a number of fronts.
Sea cucumbers are still being collected despite the ban. During the past
few weeks the navy and the national park service have confiscated three
large cargoes of dried pepinos de mar. In addition, sharks – though totally
protected – are being caught and their fins exported to Asia. In one recent
case, a number of fishing lines, supported by buoys, were found off San
Cristobal Island. Two lines had sharks caught on their hooks, while a third
was baited with a piece of sea lion flesh, with the fur still attached.
The buoys were painted with Japanese characters – indicating that foreign
fishermen are illegally operating within the reserve.

The increasing, and illegal, use of monofilament nets, which have a
very small mesh size and scoop in everything indiscriminately, threatens
many species of fish. Catches of the large groupers known locally as bacalao
have declined, and about 70 per cent of those landed nowadays are immature.
Lobsters below the legal size are taken, as well as females with eggs, and
close seasons are not observed. Some molluscs are overexploited for sale
to shell collectors, and black coral has disappeared from many areas.

The authorities are hard pressed to cope with all these problems. The
national park service is short of money and manpower, while the navy’s two
30-knot patrol vessels have only a limited ability to police the 70 000
square kilometres of the marine reserve, not to mention the 80-nautical
mile limit that applies to foreign fishing vessels.

Conservationists’ first priority is to persuade President Duran not
to revoke the ban on the sea cucumber fishery, and thus uphold protection
of the Galapagos marine ecosystem. They are reminding him that nature tourism
in Galapagos – provided it continues to be well managed and numbers are
controlled – generates an annual income for Ecuador of between $50 and
$60 million a year. If the marine environment is degraded, this valuable
income – the fourth largest source of foreign exchange – could be jeopardised.
And the entire economy of Galapagos, which is heavily geared towards tourism,
would be threatened.

The IUCN team has recommended that the sea cucumber ban should be maintained,
and that the management plan for the Galapagos Marine Resources Reserve
should be fully implemented and developed. And the Charles Darwin Foundation
has been joined by a number of other organisations, including WWF International,
the Frankfurt Zoological Society, and Conser-vation International and the
Nature Conservancy in the US, in urging that these recommendations be followed.
The government has now received over 100 letters along these lines from
scientific and conservation bodies around the world.

In the meantime, the local pepineros – encouraged, no doubt, by their
paymaster on the mainland – have taken to the streets to express their own
views on the matter. They have been picketing the Charles Darwin Research
Station, and say they will continue to do so until the ban is revoked.
More disturbing, they are threatening to kill the giant tortoises used in
the station’s captive breeding programmes and also to introduce alien animals
onto various islands.

Politically, the situation is on hold. Unable to ignore the impressive
weight of conservationist opinion, but concerned by the fishermen’s protests,
the president has bought himself some time by creating a new institution,
the Presidential Advisory Commission on the Environment, which will examine
the whole issue and provide further guidance.

For its part, the Charles Darwin Research Station plans to deploy researchers
almost immediately to start gathering vital baseline data on sea cucumber
populations throughout the archipelago.

It remains to be seen how President Duran eventually decides to balance
the environmental health of Galapagos, and the substantial long-term income
that it generates, against the siren voices of the businessmen hoping for
short-term profits and the livelihood of about 320 local fishermen and their
families. Could the fate of one small, insignificant invertebrate undermine
years of work building a conservation plan for the Galapagos?

Nigel Sitwell has visited Galapagos often since 1968, most recently
in May 1993 to research a book about the islands.