How Harvesting Location Can Impact the External and Internal Attributes of Sea Cucumbers
Sea cucumbers are not only an important part of marine ecosystems, but they are also a highly valuable seafood with numerous benefits to human health.
In Canada, orange-footed sea cucumbers are currently harvested in the Atlantic Provinces, however, there is interest from Northern communities to eventually develop a fishery in Nunavut (Arctic).
While the same species occurs in both locations, it is known that environmental conditions, which vary across latitudes and longitudes, have an influence on the appearance and nutritional qualities of a species.
Read this open access paper on the Arctic Science website.
The tidal cycle, ice cover, availability and quality of food, photoperiod and temperature are among the potential sources of variation.
Therefore, we compared sea cucumbers of about the same size collected at the same time from the Hudson Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
We examined whether the morphology and colour of sea cucumbers differed whether the levels of fat and protein were the same, and contrasted the profiles of vitamins and antioxidants present in their tissues.
We found that sea cucumbers from the Arctic had a darker brown pigmentation, with more red and yellow, had more vitamin A and antioxidants, and greater levels of essential fatty acids such as omega-3s.
These findings confirm that the unique Arctic environment influences sea cucumbers, helping us understand their ecology, determine the drivers of their nutritive value, and support the sustainable development of an Arctic fishery.
Read the paper — Comparative analysis of phenotypes in the sea cucumber Cucumaria frondosa from the Arctic and the NW Atlantic by Rachel A. Morrison, Jean-François Hamel, Jiamin Sun, and Annie Mercier
