They’re slippery, rubbery and live in the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean and many people don’t even know they exist.
“I never even knew about it until I looked on the internet at the sea cucumbers. They look pretty disgusting,” Ingrid Smith said, a resident of Hackett’s Cove, Nova Scotia.
Smith was one of several community residents that came to the grande opening of Atlantic Canada’s newest sea cucumber processing plant.
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“It’s a fairly new industry that utilizes the under-utilized species here in Atlantic Canada. It has a lot of potential and we just want to develop it for markets overseas,” David Moore said, the executive director of the Canadian Sea Cucumber Processors Association.
Sea cucumbers are part of the echinoderm family of marine animals, such as sea urchins, starfish and sand dollars.
They’re considered a delicacy in East and Southeast Asia for their health benefits and taste, and are known as the ‘ginseng’ of the sea.
“It’s huge, it’s very huge you cannot imagine how huge the market is in China,” said Sam Gao, the CEO of Atlantic Sea Cucumber Limited.
Gao is from Shanghai, China and has already opened up another sea cucumber processing plant in Sambro, NS.
“In the morning we bring the cucumbers in and cut the flowers out of them, it’s the part that the sea cucumber feeds through,” Renee Harnish said, an employee at United Trans, the processing plant in Sambro.
Harnish is one of eight employees at the plant.
She says they average 1,000 pounds of sea cucumbers each day and the harvest season runs from June to March.
The new plant in Hackett’s Cove is set to employ 20 workers, and grow its staff to 40-50 over the next few years.
The cucumbers are eaten both fresh and dried. They are mainly used as an ingredient in Asian cuisine soups or stews.
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