Blue Entrepreneurship and Sea Cucumbers as Marine Gold

Abstract

As part of the Blue Economy development paradigm, sea cucumber farming is now encouraged by the government and international partners, to improve livelihoods while protecting the ocean. Sea cucumbers have featured in lucrative trade for decades, being collected for export to China. But demand has been so great that this ocean creature has become endangered globally. Aquaculture is now hyped as a sustainable solution to the problems of overexploitation, enacted through bordered enclosures in the ocean, and an optimistic rhetoric of sea cucumbers as marine gold. This article argues that farmed sea cucumbers are embedded in blue entrepreneurship, a moral economy of neoliberal commodification. But while enacting blue capitalism, sea cucumber aquaculture may actually counteract social and environmental sustainability. Ocean grabbing and elite capture exacerbate socioeconomic vulnerability in coastal communities; while sea cucumbers risk dying in captivity, unable to protect themselves from extreme weather and other climate changes. This ethnographic study builds on multi-sited fieldwork in Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar, using multimodal and sensory research methods.

https://dx.doi.org/10.56279/NJIY8787/TJDS.v23i1.4