ASTUDY ON METAL CONCENTRATION OF SOME SELECTED SE,A'CUCUMBER SPECIES IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

Attached

Sea cucumbers (Holothurians) are consumed in some Southeast Asian countries III processedand many other forms. In Sri Lanka only the body wall of sea cucumber is processedwhich is called Beche-de-mer and mainly export without consuming locally. The metal concentration of sea cucumbers in Sri Lanka has not been studied sufficiently.In this study metal concentration of some selected sea cucumber species was analysed. Fresh samples were collected from North-western sea of Kalpitiya and DutchBay area during October- November 2008 and October- November 2009 and they wereeviscerated immediately after harvesting. Metals like Copper (Cu), Iron (Fe), Zinc (Zn), Lead (Pb), Cadmium (Cd), Cobalt (Co), Chromium (Cr) and Mercury (Hg) in speciesHolothuria edulis (Keels attaya), H. atra (Nari attaya), Thelenota anax (Poona attaya),H. scabra (Jafna attaya), H. spinifera (Disco attaya), Bohadschia sp. (Sudu nool attaya),Bohadschia similis (Line nool attaya), B. marmorata (Dumburu nool attaya) and Stichopus chloronotus (Dambalaya) were analysed. Results were statistically analysed by MINITAB 14, a one- way Analysis of Variance (AN OVA) was performed, followed by Tukey's test for comparisons of significant difference. When consider a single metal all the mean concentrations among ten species were significantly different (p<0.05) and the same result was obtained for all analysed eight metals. From results obtained iron showedthe highest accumulation (56.7 ± 14.9 mglkg dry weight) and mercury showed the lowest accumulation (24.6 ± 16.8 ug/kg dry weight).