A CURIOUS INDUSTRY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14531, 19 November 1910, Page 5 (Supplement)

A CURIOUS INDUSTRY.

GATHERING BECHE-DE-MER IN QUEENSLAND.

These sea slugs are also known by the name, of trepangs, which is the Malay name for them, and in Fiji they are called " dri" or " entires,'.' both which words in our own language, strange to say, mean to suffer. They are best known, however, by the name beche-de-mer, "which was given to them by the French, who were the fust Europeans to come across them in China.

If anything they are more like cucumbers, than spades or slugs, being., the same in shape and covered with innumerable little suckers or legs. They are not fish,' although found in the sea, but . marine animals, and belong to the invertebrate family' of liolotburoidea. In China as much as £200 a ton used to be paid for the best kinds as far back as 1877, so the industry is not a new one. Now the price of the most expensive sorts would seem to have dropped to £100 a . ton. But a great deal depends on the perfection with which the slug or.trepang is cured, and it is asserted that many traders who have taken up the gathering of the creatures cannot cure them as they were formerly.

' Quantities of beches-de-mer are now sold to some of the first-rate hotels, kitchens, and restaurants in London. The two finest varieties—and, by the way, there are something like 35 varieties altogether, though only five or six have any marketable value are what are known as the " tit-fish" or teat-fish, and the " black-fish." Mark the word "fish" applied to them, though they are admittedly not fish at all!

None of the varieties have any bone, and the tit-fish is distinguished by little teats or suckers along the inside. The black-fish is large and black and smooth, and worth about £75 a ton to-day. In prodigious quantities they lie along the bottom of the ocean upon the sand and reefs. Along the Great Barrier Reef off the north-east coast of Australia there are fleets. of boats engaged in gathering them, the same as the pearl-oyster. In fact, to prevent the extinction of the industry, so much is it plied, the Government had to establish a close time.

From the price paid for these animals, one would be inclined to think a ton of them would take a, lot of gathering, but no; they are found in such dense ehoale that a ton is easily collected by the Malay or Japanese divers, who as a rule go .down naked after them the same as after pearloysters, and will get a ton very likely in a single afternoon. Dragnets are also used for collecting them. But the 1 shallower parts of the ocean are being exhausted of the animals, so that before long it is expected the diving-suit, with its helmet, airpipes, etc., will have,to be employed for their gathering.

The boats used are wide of beam, of from 25ft to 30ft long, accommodating as many as 30 expert native divers. In Fiji girls dive as well as men, or they used to do so, if they don't now; and it was said the girls were'the more expert divers of the sexes. When, after tit-fish, the best , variety, the boats go out in the daytime, and then the crew will have its trip for nothing if it rains or gets dull,- for the slugs will crawl away into . undiscoverable hiding-places among the reefs. The black-fish are generally fished for at night. Formerly the slugs were found much nearer the surface,: only a few feet, or. as many inches, below this on the reefs, and occasionally they are still found in such shallow spotswell away from the shore, of course. The fishers merely had to walk about the reef and impale the slugs on a sharp stick and drop them into baskets. Only some half-dozen fair-sized specimens will fill a large basket. If you want a good idea of what beches-de-mer look like, imagine a blackish or dirtv grey cucumber, with a head like five little rosebuds, if one may so describe the puffy protuberances, round ageomparati large single aperture. Another variety has a dozen great starlike rays around the central aperture, and looks - like a starfish clapped,on to one end of a.cucumber. The slugs are taken ashore and the viscera removed. They are then boiled in large boilers for half an hour, when they are once more impaled on sticks and cleaned in fresh water. After this they are put on large frames over a low, smoky fire. The frames are in two'tiers, and they are kept on the lower one . three or four days and then put .on the upper, where they may be kept longer. . The drying-room, -during the process, has to be kept free from, all moisture, as this will be absorbed by the beches-de-mer or trepangs, : and one wet slug will rot all the others. The cured slugs are then sorted and stowed in bags for shipment to the nearest port.