MEXICO CITY (AP) — U.S. authorities and fishermen have been complaining for years illegal red snapper fishing within the Gulf of Mexico, and now it has been revealed who’s behind this profitable commerce: a Mexican drug cartel.
The US Treasury Department on Tuesday introduced sanctions in opposition to members of the Gulf drug cartelworking within the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros, throughout from McAllen and Brownsville, Texas.
While business fishing and drug cartels might look like an unlikely mixture, it makes good sense for a prison group.
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The division says the cartel makes use of fishing boats to facilitate drug and migrant trafficking; alongside the best way, boats catch tons of snapper, a commercially priceless however susceptible species. Boats typically depart from Playa Bagdad, east of Matamoros on the Gulf Coast.
“The Gulf Cartel is concerned within the illicit commerce of crimson snapper and shark species by way of ‘lancha’ operations based mostly in Playa Bagdad,” the division stated. “In addition to their use for IUU (unlawful, unregulated, or unreported) fishing in U.S. waters, lanchas are additionally used to move illicit medication and migrants into the United States.”
To add insult to harm, these Mexican boats, typically based mostly in Playa Bagdad, promote their catch in Mexican border cities, the place they’re generally shipped to Texas to be resold on the U.S. market.
This comes as U.S. fishermen needed to abide by strict seasonal limits or closures designed to guard fish populations.
“Because fishing for crimson snapper and sharks is topic to strict limits within the United States, and subsequently such species are extra considerable in U.S. waters, Mexican fishermen enter U.S. waters to fish by way of these lanchas,” the division stated.
“They then deliver the catch again to the lancha fields in Mexico, the place the product is finally bought and, typically, exported to the United States,” he continued. “This enterprise brings thousands and thousands a 12 months to the lancha fields. Furthermore, it additionally results in the loss of life of different marine species which are inadvertently caught” on the lengthy strains of baited hooks utilized by boats.
This isn’t the primary time cartels have been concerned in unlawful fishing in Mexico. Experts say different drug cartels are concerned within the banned totoaba gillnet fishery within the Gulf of California, often known as the Sea of Cortez, threatening the most endangered porpoise in the world, the marine vaquita.
Those focused by Tuesday’s sanctions – which block any of their actions within the United States – embody native Gulf Cartel bosses in Playa Bagdad, in addition to two house owners of fishing camps there.
The downside of unlawful fishing has grow to be so extreme that in 2022 the U.S. authorities banned Mexican fishing vessels from coming into U.S. ports within the Gulf of Mexico, arguing that the Mexican authorities had not performed sufficient to stop its boats from fishing illegally within the US waters.
Mexican fishing vessels within the Gulf “are prohibited from coming into U.S. ports and will likely be denied port entry and providers,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote in a 2022 report. According to a Sept. 10, 2024 NOAA bulletin, such restrictions stay in place.
Small Mexican boats typically use banned longlines or nets to move snapper in U.S. waters, which might hurt different marine life, corresponding to sharks.
NOAA stated in an earlier report that the U.S. Coast Guard has detained dozens of Mexican vessels within the Gulf, together with repeat offenders who had been interdicted a number of instances since 2014.
In 2018, the United States imported almost 5 tons of recent and frozen snapper from Mexico, elevating considerations that “these imports might have included fish harvested illegally in U.S. waters.”
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