As RBC writes, FP links demand for sea cucumbers to their high price and status as a delicacy in Asia, above all in China. The article says these are marine animals served at festive dinners and business events and regarded in a number of countries as a symbol of prosperity.
FP cites the case of Cesar Daleo, a former U.S. Border Patrol employee. According to investigators, he acted as an intermediary between Chinese chemical producers and Mexican drug cartels: precursors for drug production went one way, and sea cucumbers, used as payment for shipments, went the other.
According to the court, from 2014 to 2016 Daleo paid another person at least 80 times to smuggle dried sea cucumbers of the protected species Isostichopus fuscus into the United States. The total value of these shipments exceeded $250,000. In 2017, he was detained while trying to transport substances he believed were precursors from the United States to Mexico; before that, he had picked up similar packages 13 times.
In 2019, Daleo was sentenced to 30 months in prison. Wanda Felbab-Brown, an expert at the Brookings Institution in the United States, told FP that the product’s high value made it a convenient means of payment, and criminal groups in China are increasingly accepting sea cucumbers instead of cash to avoid using the international banking system.
FP writes that over the past two decades, the Sinaloa cartel and, to a lesser extent, the Jalisco New Generation cartel have gradually entered this business. According to the publication, they offered fishermen high prices and eliminated competitors through threats, kidnappings, and buyouts of their businesses.
The scheme is especially visible on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, where about ten years ago one fisherman could earn more than $1,600 a day in season. After overfishing, Mexican authorities closed the legal fishery by 2019, but illegal harvesting continued. Since 2018, the number of sea cucumber seizures at the southern U.S. border has more than doubled, and in February the Sri Lankan Navy seized 685 kg of processed sea cucumbers that allegedly came from Indian coastal villages.
FP also notes that sea cucumber harvesting is completely banned in India, while in neighboring Sri Lanka the fishery is permitted. Therefore, sea cucumbers illegally harvested in India are smuggled to Sri Lanka and then sent to Hong Kong or mainland China.
