And it’s being caused by international criminals who don’t care about death and extinction, as long as they get their filthy profits.
A macabre “wedding” between two criminal gangs on opposite sides of the world—Mexican cartels and Chinese triads—has created a new threat: the Dragon Cartel. It’s an unholy alliance that involves Mexican drug cartel members trading the illegally acquired swim bladders of endangered and shockingly valuable totoaba fish to Chinese triad gangs in return for precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl, the highly addictive synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin.
It’s a great deal for all concerned (Mexican drug cartels will get all the chemicals they need to make their fentanyl and the Chinese will use the bladders of the totoaba to flavor soups, make cosmetics and prepare traditional Chinese medicine). Except, of course, for the addicts who will die from overdosing on the fentanyl and the rare fish that will possibly disappear forever.
“As the world is globalized, organized crime is also globalized.”
Totoaba is a big fish, stretching to 6.5 feet in length and often weighing up to 220 pounds. Its swim bladder, a flexible internal sac that allows it to float, is so valued it’s known as the “cocaine of the sea.”
A single totoaba swim bladder can bring up to $10,000 in China. In 2023, police found 91 bladders in Arizona, estimated to be worth nearly $1 million on the Chinese black market.
The Chinese once used the swim bladder of the bahaba, a similar fish that inhabited Chinese waters, whose value was greater than gold. But they overfished the species to the point of near decimation, with the International Union for Conservation of Nature now listing it as critically endangered. The Mexican drug cartels, aware of the market for the bladders, began harvesting them from the similar totoaba, which live in the waters of the west coast of Mexico. The Chinese, major suppliers of precursor chemicals to make fentanyl, happily traded those chemicals for totoaba bladders.
The totoaba is itself listed as an endangered species and has been protected under the US Endangered Species Act since 1979, making it illegal to possess, transport or sell the fish. Fishing nevertheless increased to feed the new illegal market.
The cartels use the chemicals they obtain in hidden, illegal laboratories in Mexico to produce fentanyl, which is sold on world markets—very much including to the US—reaping a deadly harvest and vast profits.
But nobody—not the Chinese, not the Mexicans, nor the drug addicts—cares.
Fentanyl addicts, like the bahaba and totoaba, could also be thought of as an endangered species, considering that over 74,000 Americans were killed by fentanyl and other synthetic opioids in 2023.
Likewise, over 49,000 Canadians died from overdoses since 2016, with many of the trafficked fish bladders passing through the Canadian port of Vancouver for shipment to China.
“As the world is globalized, organized crime is also globalized,” said Mexican journalist Luis Horacio Nájera, who has investigated the totoaba/fentanyl connection.
It’s hard to catch the smugglers, he said, because unlike cocaine, totoaba is fish “and how do you know which fish is this or that? When you have a container full of tilapia or octopus or whatever among these cargoes, you can smuggle these totoaba bladders.”
The bladders are smuggled much like illegal drugs are smuggled—hidden behind door panels in cars or in packages of legal fish being shipped to China.
It’s usually effective, but sometimes the crooks get caught. The second-largest bust took place in 2023, with $2.7 million worth of swim bladders, again in Arizona. A customs officer at the Calexico-Mexicali port of entry discovered 27 totoaba bladders hidden under floor mats in the back seat of a car. Also in Calexico, one man was caught with 169 bladders and another, Song Zhen, was caught with 214 dried bladders in his home.
The smuggling has become so blatant and widespread that it is the subject of a graphic novel intended to raise awareness on illegal animal trafficking. Called Fighting for the Vaquita, the book brings to light how the vaquita, a small porpoise and the world’s rarest marine mammal, is yet further threatened because it’s frequently caught in nets by those fishing for totoaba.
Totoaba fishing and smuggling, and the fentanyl trade it fuels, is tragic for its victims, whether animal or human.
It’s also frightening to law enforcement officials who face the nightmare of international cooperation between powerful criminal gangs on two sides of the planet, willing to slaughter both fish and people.
So far, it looks like the world is at their mercy.
If we needed yet another reason to reduce demand for fentanyl, this is it.
