In March, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an international marine-protection nonprofit, made an unwelcome discovery in Mexico’s upper Gulf of California: an illegal gill net adrift with twenty-two dead sea lions, mostly juveniles, entangled in its mesh. Oona Layolle, a Sea Shepherd captain and director of vessel operations, says sea lions are among a variety of marine creatures her group finds enmeshed in gill nets set by poachers of totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi), an endangered fish endemic to the northern gulf. Layolle calls the totoaba “the cocaine of the sea” due to the astronomical prices paid in China for its swim bladders, which are prized there as an aphrodisiac, thus fueling the illegal totoaba trade. In recent years, the most widely publicized collateral damage... [Log in to read more]