Saving Seafood

US Treasury Department sanctions Gulf Cartel members for illegal fishing

November 29, 2024 — Incessant poaching by Mexican fishermen off Texas is directly tied to the Gulf Cartel and its other criminal trafficking in narcotics and human smuggling, U.S. Treasury Department officials said in announcing sanctions against five cartel operatives.

The sanctions seek to block transactions and property transfers between the targeted cartel members and U.S. citizens. Illegal fishing operations in U.S. Gulf of Mexico territorial waters typically target snapper and shark species, smuggling their catch from off Texas back to fishing camps in Mexico – and often trans-shipment to U.S. buyers, according to Treasury officials.

“Today’s action highlights how transnational criminal organizations like the Gulf Cartel rely on a variety of illicit schemes like IUU (illegal, unreported and unregulated) fishing to fund their operations, along with narcotics trafficking and human smuggling,” said Bradley T. Smith, the Treasury department’s acting under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

US says a drug cartel is behind the longstanding problem of illegal fishing in the Gulf of Mexico

November 27, 2024 — For years, U.S. authorities and fishermen have been complaining about illegal fishing for red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico, and now it’s been revealed who is behind the lucrative trade: a Mexican drug cartel.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions Tuesday against members of the Gulf drug cartel, which operates in the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros, across from McAllen and Brownsville, Texas.

While commercial fishing and drug cartels may seem like an unlikely combination, it makes perfect sense for a criminal organization.

The department says the cartel uses fishing boats to facilitate drug and migrant smuggling; along the way, the boats catch tons of red snapper, a commercially valuable but vulnerable species. The boats often launch from Playa Bagdad, east of Matamoros, on the Gulf coast.

“The Gulf Cartel engages in the illicit trade of red snapper and shark species through ‘lancha’ operations based out of Playa Bagdad,” the department said. “Apart from their use for IUU (illegal, unregulated or unreported) fishing in U.S. waters, lanchas are also used to move illicit drugs and migrants into the United States.”

Read the full article at the Associated Press 

Thanks to Mexico’s inaction, a cartel is causing irreparable damage in the ocean

December 5, 2019 — Mexico is infamous for its brutal drug cartels, which have terrorized not only the country but other large parts of Latin America. But there is one criminal organization that gets little press and that governments have yet to confront: the Cartel of the Sea. Inaction to confront this threat is having a huge economic and environmental impact in Mexico, with broader consequences for the planet.

This cartel’s business is not marijuana, cocaine or meth. It traffics in something that can be even more lucrative: the totoaba, an endangered fish. The cartel extracts the totoaba’s swim bladder, dries it and sends it to China. This is not only affecting the protected totoaba species but is also accelerating the extinction of the vaquita marina, a rare porpoise.

Many people in China believe that the buche — as the totoaba bladder is popularly known in Mexico — has aphrodisiac and medicinal properties, but there’s no scientific evidence to back this. It is also a status symbol: Serving buche soup is a sign of wealth, because one kilogram can cost more than a kilogram of cocaine — it can go for $100,000 in some Chinese cities and in New York’s Chinatown, according to investigative reports published by the nongovernmental organization Earth League International. It also communicates power, because the product comes from illegal fishing and one must have some influence to acquire it.

The Cartel of the Sea operations are based in northwestern Mexico, in the Sea of Cortez, a beautiful body of water that French explorer Jacques Cousteau once called the “world’s aquarium.”

Read the full story at The Washington Post