Subject: Holothuria - Sea Cucumber

From: Carlos Miranda Levy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 1996 08:49:34 -0300

We need info on holothuria / sea cucumber. Urgent.

Our government (here in the Dominican Republic) currently released 
1700Kgs of dried sea cucumber to an asean company which had ilegally 
fished them in our waters. This permit and release, we believe, will 
only incentivate ilegal fishing in our area, besides the catastrophic 
effects of this activity, completely unknown and not done by our native 
fisherman. The whole marine ecosystem could be upset if proper care and 
control is not placed on this.

We do not want a 2nd Galapagos "crisis".

We need al the data and info we can find on sea cucumber / holothuria, 
both on-line and anywhere else: studies, institutions, persons, 
statistics, previous law-cases, etc. We plan to use this data to back 
our protest and so our biologists prepare an informative paper on the 
species and the current affair.

We already (along with the personnel of the National Aquarium and other 
marine and ecologist organizations) sent a letter to the proper 
authorities protesting the decission of allowing this asean company to 
retire their decomised merchandise without even an amonestation (the 
authorities replied that they "promise not to let it happen again, but 
since the animals were already captured and dried, the permit was 
given").

Please, reply to [email-masked] or [email-masked]
-- 
Con paciencia y calma
sube un burro a una palma
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Carlos Miranda Levy * FUNDEMAR
Fundacion Dominicana de Estudios Marinos
(Dominican Foundation of Marine Studies)
Santo Domingo, DN, Republica Dominicana
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