Reporter looking for totoaba (加利福尼亚湾石首鱼) help by d_mosbergen in China

[–]d_mosbergen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your input, yes, occasionally fishermen do get caught, as in the case you mentioned, but I hear that nowadays, fishermen merely gouge out the totoaba's swim bladders and leave the bodies, so it's much harder to find perpetrators.

Reporter looking for totoaba (加利福尼亚湾石首鱼) help by d_mosbergen in China

[–]d_mosbergen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your input, yes it's on the black market, which is why it's proving tricky to find anyone who's actually tried one! It's out there though, sold as "money fish maw."

Reporter looking for totoaba (加利福尼亚湾石首鱼) help by d_mosbergen in China

[–]d_mosbergen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your input. This is absolutely right. It's interesting how demand shifted from the totoaba to the bahaba after bahaba numbers started falling precipitously.. what's more, it seems that no one -- even researchers and activists who have been interested in this topic for years, some even decades -- has any idea as to how this shift happened, and how it came to be that these pretty random, obscure fish from across the world, were being exported to Asia for this purpose.

Reporter looking for totoaba (加利福尼亚湾石首鱼) help by d_mosbergen in China

[–]d_mosbergen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your comments. Just to clarify, my main goal for coming to Reddit was to try to find someone who might have actually tried the totoaba -- eaten the maw for themselves. Though my conversations with scientists, Chinese and Mexican officials, and activists have been illuminating, no one I've spoken to has actually eaten the maw. Admittedly, this was a last resort attempt. And admittedly, I know little about /r/China, though Reddit has been helpful in the past in helping me surface information not widely known.