Thiruvananthapuram: A new species of sea cucumber has been named after A.Biju Kumar, head, Aquatic Biology and Fisheries, Kerala University. Thyonina Bijui, a very small species of sea cucumber, used to go unnoticed as collectors would mistake it to be a juvenile sea cucumber belonging to other known species in the genus Thyonina. A taxonomy expert from South Africa, Ahmed S. Thandar, has confirmed as part of describing sea cucumber species in the Indian Ocean that it is a species with its own unique identity.
‘T. Bijui’ was collected off the coast of Vizhinjam bay by Biju Kumar and his student Deepa Pillai. It is the first species of sea cucumber endemic to Kerala coast and is known only from the type locality Vizhinjam, according to Biju Kumar. He says that collecting the two-cm-long species, the smallest known sea cucumber in the country, was not easy.
Ahmed S. Thandar, the School of Life Sciences faculty from University of KwaZulu-Natal, says in his article in Zootaxa, “this species is named after one of its collectors, Dr Biju Kumar, of the Department of Aquatic Biology & Fisheries, University of Kerala (DABFUK), India, for allowing me to examine the materials in his museum collections.” This is the first time that a species is named after Biju Kumar, who has been working in the field of aquatic biology for 25 years.
“I am happy, of course. My name will outlive me. But more importantly, the discovery is yet another proof of the diversity of the ocean. Sea cucumber is called ‘the earthworm of the sea’ as it ploughs up sea floor and oxygenates it,” he says. There are around 30 known species of sea cucumber identified collected off the coast of Kerala. “Almost all species of sea cucumber are commercially exploited to be used as ingredients in Chinese cuisine. To put a check on their over-exploitation, India has listed them in Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act,” says Biju.
