Soft bodies make estimation hard: correlations among body dimensions and weights of multiple species of sea cucumbers
James Prescott A , Shijie Zhou B D and Andhika P. Prasetyo CA Australian Fisheries Management Authority, PO Box 131, Darwin NT 0801, Australia.
B CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Flagship, GPO Box 2583, Brisbane, Qld 4001, Australia.
C Research Center for Fisheries Management and Conservation, Ministry for Marine Affairs and Fisheries, Jl. Pasir Putih II, Ancol Timur 14430, Jakarta, Indonesia.
D Corresponding author. Email: shijie.zhou@csiro.au
Marine and Freshwater Research 66(10) 857-865 https://doi.org/10.1071/MF14146
Submitted: 6 June 2014 Accepted: 19 November 2014 Published: 19 March 2015
Journal Compilation © CSIRO Publishing 2015 Open Access CC BY-NC-ND
Abstract
Tropical sea cucumbers are commonly exploited by small-scale, poorly managed fisheries. A fundamental problem in managing sea cucumber fisheries is the lack of basic knowledge of important life history characteristics for most species. As a result of plastic body dimensions, biological research on this group of animals becomes exceptionally challenging. To improve our understanding of essential biological parameters, we conducted a study to investigate correlations among various body measurements. We analysed a total of 18 sea cucumber species and more than 6600 individuals collected at Scott Reef in the Timor Sea, north-west Australia. We used hierarchical Bayesian errors-in-variables models to specifically take into account measurement errors that are obviously unavoidable. The measures included three types of weights (wet weight, gutted weight and dry weight) and two body dimensions (length and width). The modelling reveals that using both body length and width as independent variables, wet weight increases approximately linearly with body length, but is a power function (~1.6) of body width, although variability exists among species. Dry weight tends to increase more slowly with body length, but has a similar power function of body width. Linear relationships are established between the three types of weights. On average, ~11% of a live specimen and ~16% of a gutted specimen is processed to the commercially traded dry body wall. Our results can be applied to sea cucumbers in other areas and can be useful for data standardisation and size-based fisheries management.
Additional keywords: beche-de-mer, Indonesia, small-scale fisheries, trepang.
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