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Prosecutors in San Diego have consign two men who smuggled $ 17 million worth of sea cucumbers from Mexico to Asia with two age ' probation and mulct totaling over $ 1 million , The San Diego Union - Tribune cover .
The two men , David Mayorquin and his father , Ramon Torres Mayorquin , were named in a 26 - count Union bill of indictment register last year for theillegal trafficking of wildlifefrom 2010 to 2012 , the Tribune report .
Sea cucumbers are blob-like marine invertebrates that are highly sought after by fishermen because of their high value in Asian seafood markets.
The father - and - Word squad reportedly own and operate the seafood party Blessings , Inc. free-base out of Tucson , Arizona . According to the company ’s single - page web site , Blessings Seafood is a multinational distributer of Gulf Coast shrimp . [ In photo : Spooky Deep - Sea Creatures ]
What ’s not mention on the web site is that the men who execute the company bribed Mexican officials , used bogus bank accounts and falsified federal papers to lawlessly remove over 110 rafts of sea cucumbers from Mexican waters , accord to the indictment , the Tribune describe .
ocean cucumbers are n’t related to the unripe gourd they ’re key out after , but rather , they are nautical invertebrates that look kind of like giant , fertile garden slugs and come in a wide miscellanea of colouring and patterns . They’rerelated to sea principal and sea urchinsand belong to the taxonomic class called Holothuroidea .
There are more than 1,000 different coinage of sea cucumbers , and they livealmost everywhere in the sea , but in many areas they ’ve been overfished , and as a result , the entire ecology of the area has ache . Baja California , on the west coast of Mexico , is one of these realm . In 1994 , the National Institute of Ecology in Mexico announce that the sea cucumbers of Baja were in danger of extinction , according to theUniversity of Michigan ’s Museum of Zoology , and that status has n’t exchange .
Despite their dwindling universe , fisher continue to place these defenceless , balmy brute because ocean cucumbers bring a pretty centime on theAsian seafood market , where they ’re considered a delicacy .
In 2011 , sea cucumbers were sell for between $ 70 and $ 1,475 per Ezra Pound on the Chinese market ( the average sea Cucumis sativus weighs between 0.1 and 5 lbs . , or 0.4 to 2.5 kilograms ) , according to a 2014 subject field put out in the journalProceedings of the Royal Society B , Biological Sciences .
Originally publish onLive Science .
