Maldives Seafood

seamaster 31 October 2008 Echinoderms 8,556 views One Comment Print This Post

Echinoderms

Sea cucumber and Sea urchin belongs to the group Echinoderms.

Sea cucumber.

It is a sea food belonging to the group Echinoderms.This is mostly used by Asians to eat .

It is found on the sea floor world wide.In Maldives it live at the bottom of shallow lagoons and reefs where there are corals and sea weeds.

They are cucumber shaped with a hard leathery body.

They have feathery tentacles surrounding their mouth.

They have five rows of suckers-tube feet.

Generally they feed on dirts, mud,debris and waste of creatures - they are scavengers.

And with the help of their feathery tentacles they get their foods.

They are known as Reef cleaners.

Types of Sea cucumber in Maldives.

Prickly red fish - Alanaasi

Giant Beache De-mas - Kaggala

Elephant trunk fish - Elephantu

Green fish - Feeru

Surf red fish - Mushi

Lolly fish - holhi

White teat fish - Hudhubattu or Kolhubatu

Black fish - Kolhukiru.

Sea urchin

This is a small, spiny sea creature.

They are found in oceans all over the world.

In Maldives a large amount lives on the Reef.It is preserved creature in Maldives.

Its main food is algae ,and mussels, sponges and brittle stars are also eaten by them.

Some of the countries who use it as a food are:

Korea

Japan

Chile

Spain

Greek

Italy

Lebanon.

Many countries like Chile export to Japan as a large amount of Sea urchin is used in their cuisine.

From this group Sea cucumber is the only product that we Export from Maldives.And there are great opportunities for those who like to Invest on farming them.