EXPLORATION OF THE HIGH-VALUED MARINE BIORESOURCES IN THE INDO-PACIFIC AND THEIR EMERGING PROSPECTS, CULTURE POTENTIALS, CONSERVATION STRATEGIES AND BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS

M. Aminur Rahman*, Fatimah Md. Yusoff and Aziz Arshad
Laboratory of Marine Biotechnology, Institute of Bioscience, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
*Corresponding author's E-mail: aminur1963@gmail.com

Malaysian/Indonesian Archipelago belonging to the Indo-Pacific is the "Centre of Origin" of many diverged marine flora and fauna. The region has been considered as one of the richest marine biodiversity hotspot comprising unique species of echinoderms, mollusks, shrimps, crabs and fishes in the oceanic systems. These bioresources provide excellent opportunities for the studies of breeding biology, reproductive ecology, aquaculture, conservation, population genetics as well as species and speciation mechanisms (evolution) of many diverged taxa. However, this interesting area is quite new and yet to be explored in Malaysia. In the bottom-dwelling sessile invertebrates, echinoderms have been considered as the high-valued marine bioresource, having profound biological, ecological, aquacultural, conservational, nutritional and pharmaceutical significance. Among them, the sea urchins and sea cucumbers are both commercially fished and heavily overexploited. In sea urchins, the harvested product is the gonad of both sexes, commonly known as "Sea urchin Roe", which has been long traditions of consuming as a high delicacy food in Asian, Mediterranean and Western Hemisphere countries, and have long been using as luxury foods in Japan. The population of the Asian Pacific Region has been using it for long time as a remedy for improving general living tone and treatment for a number of diseases.  In the sea cucumber, the principal product is the boiled and dried body-wall or 'bêche-de-mer' for which there is an increasing demand in many tropical and subtropical countries. In addition, sea cucumbers have also been popular as a traditional food tonic in China, Korea and Taiwan for thousands of years. Sea cucumbers are also believed to exert wound healing and reduce arthritis pain in humans, hence are widely used in Asian folk medicine. However, due to lack of proper management and conservation strategy in place, many sea urchin and sea cucumber fisheries are under threat. For this, cultivation of these species increasingly becomes a necessity, both for stock enhancement programs and as a means to meet the increasing market demand. Large-scale cultivation of commercial sea urchins through effective culture and reseeding methods of species has been practiced in Japan for many years. However, sea urchin cultivation, outside in Japan is still a recent practice, less than 15 years old, and mainly still at a research level, even though a number of commercial species are now being produced and cultured in captive rearing conditions. Culture of sea cucumber first initiated in Japan in the 1930s and is now well established there and in China. Procedures for mass production of the tropical Holothuria scabra are now well established in India, Australia, Indonesia, the Maldives and the Solomon Islands, and have recently been practicing in Philippine and Thailand. Alike many other marine organisms, echinoderms have been, and continue to be, examined as a source of biologically active compounds with biomedical applications. Most recently, a number of important bioactive compounds have been isolated from sea cucumbers, sea urchins and starfish, having distinctive biological and pharmacological activities including anti-angiogenic, anticancer, anticoagulant, anti-hypertension, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, antioxidant, antithrombotic, antitumor and wound healing activities. However, development patterns of echinoderm fisheries are largely expectable, often unsustainable and frequently too rapid for effective management. Proper steps should be undertaken on the potential ecosystem and human community consequences, appropriate aquaculture management strategies, and urge for better monitoring and reporting of catch and abundance, proper scientific research for stock enhancement and consideration of international biodiversity and trade regulations to ensure sustainable development and utilization of high-valued echinoderm fisheries in the Indo-Pacific to a greater extent.

Key words: Indo-Pacific, Echinoderm, Bioresource, Exploration, Potential, Culture, Conservations, Applications