Hello!
Today we will talk about cucumbers.
No, not about those that grow in the beds, but about those that live on the seabed.
They are also called holothurians, and those that are eaten are called trepangs.
Cucumbers usually cost less than $3 per kilo.
However, for sea cucumbers, you will have to pay more than $ 3,000 per kilogram.
In fact, they are so valuable that people are willing to risk their lives just to get
them.
Sea cucumbers are quite unusual creatures that can look different.
Most of them are slow animals with a leathery shell and a soft cylindrical body.
They are important marine invertebrates that can be found throughout the world in both
shallow and deep ocean waters.
Some deep-sea species are active swimmers.
They are rather strange animals.
They have no limbs or eyes.
But they have a mouth and an anus, and a lot of organs in between.
Through their eating habits, sea cucumbers help recycle ocean nutrients.
They gather food with the help of tentacles surrounding the mouth, of which they have
from 8 to 30.
But in fact, the tentacles are modified tubular legs.
Some filter food from seawater, and some use their brush-like mouths to ingest and process
organic material from sediment.
They often leave neat rows of excrement behind them.
In most sea cucumbers, the internal skeleton consists only of microscopic ossicles embedded
under the skin.
In a relaxed state, the body of the sea cucumber is flexible and long.
If disturbed, they can shorten and harden their bodies.
At first glance, sea cucumbers seem to be quite good-natured animals and, it would seem,
they are easy prey for predators.
No wonder many animals prey on them.
However, most of them, despite their apparent helplessness, have developed effective defense
mechanisms.
Many of them use the most obvious method of protection for such animals - toxin.
Most species carry a toxin called holothurin in their organs, some can even excrete it
through their skin when they feel threatened.
This toxin is so effective at killing small animals, especially fish, that it is even
used by fishermen from the Indo-Pacific regions to hunt fish.
Most sea cucumbers also have the absurd ability to regurgitate internal organs from their
mouths, which are released into the surrounding water.
This phenomenon is called gutting and is meant to distract or scare away predators.
As cruel as it may seem, this behavior does not kill sea cucumbers because they have incredible
self-healing abilities.
They can quickly regenerate lost organs.
Some release sticky threads (Cuvier tubes) to confuse and confuse predators.
To do this, they even developed a special organ, the so-called Cuvier tubules.
These are long white tubes attached to one or both of the respiratory organs.
If a cucumber is attacked by a predator, it ejects these sticky, sometimes stringy, toxic
filaments from its anus.
The resulting network of threads can confuse, immobilize and even kill potential predators,
which gives the trepang the opportunity to crawl away.
In order to breathe, sea cucumbers have an internal system of branched respiratory organs.
Sea water is drawn in and ejected through a series of contractions.
Oxygen is extracted from the water and carbon dioxide is removed from the trepang system.
Although sea cucumbers do not have a brain, they do have a nervous system.
Five rows of large nerves run throughout the body.
Nerves in their skin help them feel the light.
That is why the surface of their body is sensitive to light.
Depending on the species, sea cucumbers can grow from an inch to 10 feet or 3 meters in
length.
These unusual animals have been valued as a delicacy in Asia for centuries.
The richest people ate them as a nutritious, high-protein treat.
In the 1980s, the demand for sea cucumbers increased dramatically.
With the growth of the middle class in China, more and more people could afford such a luxury.
Today, holothurians are usually dried and packaged in ornate boxes.
It is then given as a gift or served on special occasions.
And the more bizarre and unusual these creatures look, the better.
Because they cost more.
It turns out that the more spiked animals, the higher their price.
And out of 1,250 different types of sea cucumber, the Japanese sea cucumber ranks first in the
world.
It can be imagined as a mythical dragon slug with spikes protruding from it.
The price of $3,500 per kilogram makes the sea cucumber the most expensive seafood on
the market.
In comparison, the Golden Sandfish holothurian costs only $850 per kilogram.
Dragonfish is $130 and fish curry is $430.
At the Amazon online store, you will have to pay $ 170 for a plate of ordinary sea cucumber.
In addition to appearance, cucumber connoisseurs most like the holothurian body, which is pleasant
to chew and, to a lesser extent, taste.
But their gourmet consumption is only part of their popularity.
It turns out that sea cucumbers contain high levels of a chemical called fucosylated glycosaminoglycan.
The substance is part of the intercellular tissue and plays an important role in ion
exchange and immune reactions.
For centuries, people in Asia have used holothurian skin to treat joint problems such as arthritis.
More recently, in Europe, sea cucumbers have been used to treat certain types of cancer.
They help reduce blood clots.
Thus, interest in sea cucumbers is expanding.
First of all, the demand for the original Asian delicacy, which began in the 1980s,
has increased, and there is a new interest from Western pharmaceutical companies.
In response, fishing for sea cucumbers of native species has increased.
The catch geography has expanded from Morocco to the USA and Papua New Guinea.
Everyone wanted to participate in the world trade in sea cucumbers.
It began to spread like an epidemic from one country to another.
For example, from 1996 to 2011, the number of countries exporting sea cucumbers increased
from 35 to 83.
However, unfortunately, sea cucumbers could not withstand such an onslaught.
For example, in the Yucatan in Mexico, divers experienced a 95% drop in production.
This happened between 2012 and 2014.
What problems have arisen with the catch of sea cucumbers?
First of all, the problem is that the more sea cucumbers are harvested, the rarer and
more expensive they become.
Between 2011 and 2016, average prices worldwide rose by almost 17%.
And the rarer these animals become, the deeper divers go to find them.
Such fishing becomes dangerous.
In some countries, trepang fishing is carried out without special training.
Because of this, in some tropical countries, many people become paralyzed due to decompression
sickness.
At least 40 divers from Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula are known to have died trying to harvest sea
cucumbers today.
And as demand continues to rise, the problem is only getting worse.
Of the seventy trepang species harvested, seven are considered endangered species.
Such aggressive fishing is forcing the closure of numerous fisheries around the world, which
is detrimental to the local economy.
So why not grow sea cucumbers under artificial conditions in such conditions?
Leave the wild ones alone.
But that's easy to say and hard to do.
The fact is that many larvae die before reaching maturity.
And it takes two to six years for survivors to reach marketable size.
However, aquaculture for several species of trepang has begun to gain momentum.
Like for this fancy Japanese sea cucumber.
Today, the cultivation of trepang in China is estimated at billions of individuals.
Therefore, it is hoped that more species will be farmed rather than fished in the future.
This will help keep this quirky and charming animal alive.
Such a peculiar business of its kind can be found in Madagascar, where in one of the villages,
they recently began to breed these animals.
Endangered sea cucumbers are grown in designated and isolated areas.
This will help protect this important species and other marine life in southwestern Madagascar.
Sea cucumbers play an important role in cleaning up the seabed.
They are believed to help maintain supplies of other marine life.
In this region, chronic overfishing affects not only sea cucumbers, but also other types
of marine life.
Although not the most charismatic animals, they play an extremely important role in eating
sediment, small particles of digested food, destroyed bacterial cells and other organic
materials.
To reduce overfishing of marine organisms, a non-governmental organization helped train
700 local fishermen and women in small-scale sustainable sea cucumber farming.
This means that many locals are no longer using the methods that contributed to the
overfishing of fish and seafood in the region.
When fish stocks in the region doubled in 5 years, this convinced the local population
to become even more active in aquaculture.
In Asia, the demand for sea cucumbers is increasing, as here they are valued as aphrodisiacs.
Now here, farmers can earn up to $50 a month, which is about twice as much as an ordinary
fisherman.
Although this is still well below the global average wage.
But still it brought a dramatic improvement in the quality of life of the local population.
Now the task is to increase the number of similar farms.
This will help repair the enormous damage that has been done to ecosystems across the
ocean.
The uninitiated may get the impression that sea cucumber is difficult to prepare.
However, it is actually very simple.
The correct way to cook trepang will allow you to enjoy its nutritional value and tenderness.
If the sea cucumbers are frozen, they should first be thawed with warm or cold water.
Better, of course, cold.
After defrosting, clean the surface, especially the belly.
The cleaned part immediately changes color.
Then you need to clean the trepang from the sand.
If you open the head part, you can see that there is some sand in this place.
It should be removed.
Now it is clean and beautiful.
As for the inside, everything is very clean here.
The existing five muscles should be rinsed with cold water.
They will also look like after cooking.
Depending on preference, sea cucumbers can be boiled open or whole.
Trepang should be put in boiling water and boiled for 5 minutes.
Then place it in a vacuum container for 4 hours.
You can also slowly cook trepang for two hours.
Cook until the sea cucumber becomes soft, like wax.
Trepang after cooling can be put in the refrigerator.
Storage time is usually 3-5 days.
This is
what it looks like after cooking.
Isn't it cute.
It is very tasty and healthy.
It has a high nutritional value, which is provided by a significant content of protein,
calcium and zinc.
Various vitamins such as vitamin A, B2 and B3 provide low cholesterol and fat levels.
Enjoying this delicious food, you can not worry about weight gain.
That's all.
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