Abstract

The scientific literature established that the sea cucumber fisheries are widespread around the world. It is notorious that in the Western Indian Ocean, the sea cucumber industry has existed for over a century and is an important livelihood source in many coastal households. The fishing pressure on the sea cucumbers resulted in the decline of these resources. The FAO fisheries statistics shown that the total sea cucumber caught have been declining over the last 10 years. Due to the men-tioned fact, the Asian markets moved to Latin America for countries such Colombia, Brazil, Dominican Republic, and others. Since 2011, one person in Puerto Rico was authorized by the government to establish the commercial fishery of sea cucumbers. Approximately three fishing vessels and six commercial fishers were working in this fishery. All the catch from Puerto Rico has been sold to Chinese dealers whom send the catch to Asia countries. Unfortunately we don’t know the final destination. In 2011, this sea cucumber fishery reported an average of 12,353 individuals/caught per month. The fishery it is active during March to November. Every sea cucumber individual was sold in USD $0.30 and after the dehydration process the price to the dealers it is estimated an average of USD $0.65 per individual. This paper will discuss the name by species of sea cucumber caught by the fishery, number of individuals catch per trip, description of the dehydration process, catch per unit effort and also an estimate of the economy impact of this fishery

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