A large portion of the world’s cocaine travel around the world on ships (or submarines, which leads to dramatic footage like this), but that’s not the ‘cocaine of the sea’ we are talking about.

Ever heard of the vaquita, the world’s smallest and most endangered porpoise? Probably not, but there are now fewer than 15 left in the Sea of Cortez, off the coast of Mexico.

They’re actually suffering as a byproduct of China’s massive demand for the swim bladders, also known as ‘maws’, from a giant Mexican fish called totoaba.

That’s a swim bladder, or ‘maw’, pictured above after it was confiscated by Mexican police.

To catch totoaba, which have been dubbed ‘the cocaine of the sea’, fisherman use illegal gillnets, and the vaquita are caught in the crossfire.

Everything making sense so far? Good. Here’s the Daily Beast, who sent undercover reporters on their way to uncovering a massive crime syndicate:

Pretending to be illegal buyers, we covertly video-recorded Chinese traffickers in Mexico explaining to our operatives how they use totoaba [caught in a net, below] to launder money back to China, tens of millions of dollars every year, and how some of them reinvested the profits into other illicit activities.

Additional investigative work by our teams revealed how the Chinese mafia in Mexico joined forces with former and current Mexican narco-traffickers to exploit this incredible opportunity to make money fast and with very low risks, bribing and threatening anyone who blocked their lucrative trades.

The retail price of totoaba maw on the black market in China has been recorded by undercover teams to be over $50 per gram—higher than gold. A fisherman in the Sea of Cortez can earn more in one night catching a few totoabas than they may otherwise earn in a year.

Whilst money has been invested in the conservation side, in order to maintain the region’s rich ecosystem, it’s clear that more needs to be done to tackle the largely unchecked criminality.

In order to draw attention to the issue, National Geographic made a documentary, titled Sea of Shadows.

It first aired in select theatres on July 12, so let’s have a look at the trailer:

The same undercover reporters who exposed the illegal industry feature in that doccie, and organisations like LA-based Earth League International, as well as Project WildLeaks, the world’s first whistleblowing initiative dedicated to environmental crime, are not giving up without a fight:

Crucial information gathered during our operations only appears in a Confidential Intelligence Brief (CIB) that has been prepared and submitted to law enforcement authorities in Mexico, China, and the United States. The CIB contains all the non-redacted data gathered regarding the key players, their networks, and the complete modus operandi of these traffickers and traders, as well as hundreds of photos and hours of relevant undercover footage…

Ranked the world’s fourth largest criminal activity in the world, environmental crime is now orchestrated at the same level of complexity as every other major criminal enterprise. We need to acknowledge that environmental crime at this scale is a form of terrorism against Earth.

With intelligence, we can build a new, Promethean defense in the conservation model, and with the right professionals and the necessary tools, we can preemptively guard our wildlife, forests, and oceans. Our Planet.

Always nice to see someone fighting the good fight, and we can only hope that totoaba, and therefore vaquitas, get the protection they so desperately need.

You’ll probably have to dig around online to find the full doccie, but it may well be worth it.

[source:dailybeast]