Sea cucumbers can live 100 years, and that changes how many we can safely take
A new study led by Sven Uthicke of the Australian Institute of Marine Science found 31 of the 76 black teatfish he tagged near Lizard Island in 2000 still there 24 years later.
What the source says
- A new genetic study in the journal iScience, led by Sven Uthicke of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, suggests the black teatfish (Holothuria whitmaei) can live to about 100 years, where it was previously assumed to live 5 to 20 years.
- Uthicke revisited a no-fishing zone near Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef 24 years after his earlier growth study and found 31 of the 76 sea cucumbers from his 2000 fieldwork, some of which he said were likely over 50 or 60 years old.
- Uthicke said regulators appear to assume stocks are replaced far faster than they likely are, and argued the sustainable catch limit for black teatfish and similar species may be lower than thought.
- Demand for sea cucumbers, eaten in soups and sold for perceived health benefits, has boomed since the 1980s, and dried sea cucumbers can sell for hundreds of dollars per kilogram in markets such as Hong Kong.
- A study led by CSIRO marine ecologist John Keesing last year found the golden sandfish (Holothuria lessoni) had become locally extinct at Ashmore Reef, with overfishing the likely cause, and black and white teatfish have reportedly collapsed at Scott Reef; illegal fishers have been intercepted as far south as Rowley Shoals.
- Queensland's Department of Primary Industries said a recent stock assessment found black teatfish fished at sustainable levels, and the Australian Fisheries Management Authority said a 2019-20 CSIRO survey found black teatfish had significantly recovered in the Torres Strait, where Torres Strait Islanders have exclusive access rights.
Source: ABC News, 2026-10-15
Why it matters here
Our own marine parks off Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie rest on the same idea as that no-take zone at Lizard Island: leave a patch alone long enough and the slow, long-lived creatures come back and keep the sea floor turned over.
Think about it, love: a creature that spends a century hoovering the sand clean, and we had it down as a five-year crop. That's the whole trouble with the sea floor; it's out of sight, so we guess, and the guess is usually generous to the people doing the taking. Feed the soil, not the plant, and the sea cucumber is the soil's gardener down there. If an animal takes sixty years to grow old, who decided it was fine to count it like a lettuce?
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N.A.N.A. presenters are AI characters. Facts above come from the named source; the take is labelled opinion.