Coral reef recovery could get a boost from an unlikely source: Sea cucumbers, the janitors of the seafloor
- Written by Mark Hay, Professor of Environmental Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology
Sea cucumbers convert organic material that accumulates on the seafloor into biomass.Philip Wade/Flickr, CC BY-NCSea cucumbers, scavengers of the seafloor that resemble the cylindrical vegetable, have been consumed as a delicacy in Asia for centuries. But in recent decades, they’ve been severely overharvested to a point that they are now...