Sea cucumber breeding in an Indian Ocean Trepang (IOT) laboratory. IOT is a SME which specialises in sea cucumber aquaculture on a large scale. They have developed a new process for sea cucumber breeding and plan to use the technology, along with the Vezo fishermen of the western littoral, in the fight against the overfishing of the sea cucumber. The echinoderm's population crashed dramatically due to over-exploitation. Now the plan is for fishermen to become 'sea farmers', getting a guaranteed income from growing the cucumbers in pens for export to the Chinese market.