Soaring prices for sea cucumber are driving rampant trade in smuggled sea cucumber in China.
In Nanning, the capital of Guangxi Province, which sits on the border with Vietnam authorities paraded several smuggling suspects past local television cameras in revealing a bust of nearly two tons of sea cucumber worth CNY 2 million (USD 298,000, EUR 263,500) last week. And the month prior, police in Nanning seized four tons of dried sea cucumber valued at CNY 5 million (USD 745,400, EUR 659,000). China’s smuggled sea cucumber supply comes from as far away as Mexico, Peru, and the archipelagos of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
Hotter summers in the key growing region are driving sea cucumber prices in China to record highs. Unusually high temperatures last summer killed or stunted 92 percent of sea cucumber stocks in the key cultivation region of Liaoning Province, pushing prices upwards.
Sea cucumber prices jumped to CNY 200 (USD 29.82, EUR 26.37) per kilo, up 25 percent year-on-year, in early October in Qingdao, a key marketing center for the Chinese sea cucumber trade. By contrast average prices for other high-end favorites – abalone, mantis shrimp, and Japanese scallops – were CNY 140 (USD 20.87, EUR 18.46), CNY 10 (USD 1.49, EUR 1.32), and CNY 180 (USD 26.83, EUR 23.73) per kilo, respectively.
