Sea Urchin As A Potential Fisheries Resources And Its Management Approach

Indonesia is an archipelago country with many potential fisheries resources and sea urchin is among them.Several places in Indonesia are utilizing sea urchin and Pari Island which located in Kepulauan Seribu Regency,Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta Province,Indonesia is one among the common area for utilization of this species.Diadema setosum is the common species that utilized by the local community in Pari Island as a source of generating income as well as food.The sea urchin has been utilized for a long time ago and there is a tendency of excessive exploitation.The purposes of this study are to identify the actors that were in the sea urchin utilization,assess how sea urchin utilization in Pari Island and develop a concept of sea urchin sustainable utilization and protection that might be applied by fishermen in Pari Island.The sea urchin utilization has been done for a long time ago by using simple gear such as hand net or scoop net The fishermen utilize the sea urchin gonad and sell to the fish collector,then they sell out to Japanese restaurants and pharmacetutical factory.There are two impacts caused by sea urchin utilization namely negative impacts and positive impacts.The negative impacts of the sea urchin utilization are decreasing on sea urchin population and density in nature,decrease the success rate of fertilization which is lead to decline the number of catches,the difficulty of finding sea urchin and the loss of potential grazer in the marine ecosystem.The positive impacts of sea urchin utilization are providing employment opportunity in the fisheries sector,increasing fishermen income and coral reef bio-erosion reduction caused by an excessive population of sea urchins.The establishment of catch size restriction and community-based Marine Protected Areas can be applied to manage the sea urchin utilization in Pari Island and to keep the sustainability of sea urchin stock in nature.