Wildlife

Race for Mexico’s ‘cocaine of the sea’ pushes 2 species toward extinction

The lucrative black market for totoaba swim bladders — prized in Chinese traditional medicine for their purported healing and beautifying properties — have turned the Gulf of California into a battleground, criss-crossed by armed poachers, Mexican navy vessels and environmental activists patrolling with pirate flags.

The casualties of this war include not only the critically endangered totoaba, but also the world’s smallest porpoise, the vaquita marina — of which just 30 remain, according to scientists — and local fishermen caught in the middle.

Mexican authorities say the vaquita has been virtually wiped out by totoaba fishing, because it gets stuck in the same kind of net.

Authorities say poachers filet the totoaba at sea, stash the swim bladders in hidden compartments and toss the bodies back into the water. Then they ship their haul in small quantities — the same strategy used by drug cartels.

In the faraway city of Guangzhou, in a shop on a busy street, a soft-spoken saleswoman shows an undercover AFP reporter her collection of dried totoaba swim bladders, fetched from a store room upstairs and carefully laid out on a wooden table. The prices range from 20,000 yuan ($3,160) to 130,000 yuan ($20,500).