Sea urchin is a fishery with high commercial value and its consumption can be traced back to prehistory, but the overexploitation of natural banks has caused a significant decrease in the global exploitation of this species in recent years, of which Galicia is the main producer in Europe. To address this situation, countries such as Japan and the USA, two of the world’s largest producers, have begun to focus on aquaculture and develop exploitation plans and pilot-scale repopulation experiments. It is in this context that the Ocimer project emerged, an initiative of the Toralla Marine Science Station (Ecimat, CIM-UVigo) to optimize the integral cultivation of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus (Lamarck, 1816). With a duration of two years and a total budget of €148,420, the project is part of the Pleamar call, promoted by the Biodiversity Foundation, an entity that finances 70% of the total costs, thanks to funds from the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF). ECIMAT’s participation in the project is co-financed by the Xunta de Galicia and the European Union, through its co-financing under the FEDER/FSE Galicia 2014-2020 Operational Program.
This Wednesday, its leaders presented the main lines of research at the headquarters of the Atlantic Islands National Park, a partner in the project together with the San Xosé de Cangas Fishermen’s Brotherhood. The general objective of the project is to implement new optimized cultivation techniques and sea urchin repopulation methodologies, which contribute to improving the quality of the gonads produced, extending their period of commercialization on the market, as well as the recovery of populations in overexploited areas and the associated fishing activity. To this end, overexploited areas of the Vigo estuary will be repopulated with 30,000 specimens, as the technician responsible for the project, Noelia Tourón, advanced. “We are going to carry out small experimental releases to evaluate the recovery and survival rate and then repopulation will be carried out on a larger scale, probably in the Cíes Islands.” The researcher recalled that, given the exponential increase in the price of this product year after year, “it is starting to be profitable to make native hedgehog hatcheries, and it is expected that in a few years production will increase significantly, both for the national market and for export”, since Galician production is mainly destined for France and Belgium. In addition, within the framework of the project, work will also be done on optimizing all the cultivation phases “so that the greatest number of juveniles are produced in the shortest possible time and growth diets will be implemented”, with which they hope to obtain a survival rate of 60%.
Sustainable fisheries and biodiversity conservation
The presentation ceremony was opened by Jose Manuel García, director of Ecimat, and Montserrat Martínez Morán, deputy director of the Atlantic Islands National Park of Galicia, who emphasized the importance of this type of project having the national park, “a controlled place that provides many facilities for research”. García, as IP of the Ocimer project, recalled that the sea urchin “has gone from being a secondary species to being a product with enormous demand that has forced the development of exploitation plans that ensure the sustainability of this resource”. The project is a commitment by Ecimat in this line with the aim of “promoting fishing and aquaculture sustainability as well as the conservation of its biodiversity”. He said that the research team will focus on three main lines of work. One of them is oriented towards breeding and repopulation in fishing extraction areas, optimizing the juvenile production process and focusing, above all, on the fixation and metamorphosis phases, for which they have the collaboration of the Fishermen’s Brotherhood of Cangas. In relation to this line, García pointed out, “an aspect that concerns us is the conservation of the biodiversity of sea urchins in the surroundings of the Atlantic Islands National Park and, in this sense, a biobank of native species will be created, for which protocols for cryopreservation of biological and reproductive material of different local sea urchin species will be developed.” A third line of research involves designing diets that improve the condition, texture and color of the sea urchin gonads before their commercialization.
Along with the researcher responsible for the project, Jose Manuel García, Damián Costas, head of the Biological Resources and Marine Cultures Unit at Ecimat, and Estefanía Paredes, researcher in the EcoCost group at CIM-UVigo and head of the Functional Preservation Service of Marine Organisms at Ecimat, are involved in Ocimer. At the end of the project, the team will create a comprehensive manual for the cultivation of Paracentrotus lividus and they hope to publish the results in international scientific journals. All the progress that is being made can be followed through social networks at @ocimerUvigo.
A species of high ecological and commercial importance
The sea urchin is a species of high ecological importance since, as researcher Noelia Tourón explains, “they make up the most important biomass of the seabed and are great regulators of macroalgae, even modifying the composition and richness of species on the seabed”. The scientist also highlights their vulnerability, given that when they reproduce “they form large schools of urchins, so overfishing and illegal fishing affect them greatly, as they are also a slow-growing species”.
Pero non só teñen importancia ecolóxica, senón tamén comercial e seu valor foise incrementando exponencialmente nos últimos anos. Galicia é a principal produtora de Europa e, dende a década dos 2000 a produción mantívose arredor das 750 toneladas/ano. Os prezos aumentaron de xeito destacado, chegando ao máximo en 2016, con 7 euros/kg de media anual e picos de máis de 20€/kg. Así, nos dous últimos anos, Galicia rexistrou un volume anual de 4,5 millóns de euros de valor económico, máis do dobre do rexistrados dous anos antes.
Source: DUVI
