[en] Today, most sea urchins fisheries worldwide must deal with overexploitation. Better management of exploited field populations and/or aquaculture is increasingly considered necessary to sustain sea urchin production in the future. In this context, we evaluate the potential of land-based, closed-cycle echiniculture. A long-term experiment with the edible sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus has been done on a pilot scale. The process allows total independence from natural resources, because the entire biological cycle of the echinoids is under control (closed-cycle echiniculture), and all activities are performed on land. Furthermore, a method has been set up to control the reproductive cycle with the aim to produce marketable individuals all year long. Performances obtained on each stage of the rearing process are quantified and analyzed. Overall, the results of this experiment are promising; however, some problems remain to be solved before we can claim profitability. The most important finding is that land-based, closed-cycle echiniculture is a potential viable supplement to fisheries to sustain worldwide sea urchin roe production.
