Sea cucumber aquaculture is expanding rapidly in Asia, with the sentience and welfare of these unusual echinoderms an emerging area of scientific and ethical consideration.
Sea cucumber welfare raises genuinely novel questions about the lower boundaries of morally relevant sentience. Sea cucumbers possess simple nervous systems that control basic behavioural responses but lack the complex neurological structures associated with pain in vertebrates. Their remarkable ability to eviscerate in response to stress — expelling internal organs that later regenerate — suggests a capacity for detecting and responding to threatening stimuli, but whether this involves subjective experience is entirely unknown. The precautionary approach to sentience under conditions of scientific uncertainty would suggest minimising unnecessary stressors in sea cucumber aquaculture even without certainty about their capacity for suffering. The growing scale of sea cucumber production makes resolving these questions increasingly important.