There are around 1,400 varieties of sea cucumbers and one of them, popularly known as sea cucumber or carajo, lives in Andalusian waters. Some small drug traffickers have exchanged the bundle of hashish for bags of this product, highly appreciated by Chinese customers due to its invigorating properties.
It is an echinoderm involved in the recycling of nutrients and in the oxygenation of the sediment of the seabed, according to scientists, but in a legal limbo in Andalusia, where its capture is not prohibited, although it is not regulated either, and where poachers It has been thrown into the sea to carry out an illegal activity that can be sanctioned with up to 60,000 euros.
This is not the case in other communities such as Galicia, where since last year the fishing exploitation of sea cucumber has been allowed for local trawlers and the Gran Sol deep-sea fleet, the acting head of Seprona de la Guardia explains to Efe. Civilian in the Cádiz Command, First Sergeant José María García.
Up to 500 euros per kilo
Currently, more than 60 species are fished in 70 countries around the world, which direct their export to the Asian continent, willing to pay what the pocket of the consumer at origin cannot: between 300 and 500 dollars per kilo. Amount that skyrockets if the recipient is the Chinese market.
In Spain, García recalls, a variety of sea cucumbers, the espardeña, of which only the muscular bands of the intestine are consumed, is a highly appreciated delicacy in Levante and Catalonia. The gourmet comes to pay 130 euros per kilo, a prohibitive price for many.
But for the poacher who enters the Andalusian waters in free immersion, without signaling his location and, therefore, risking himself and endangering others, the client that interests him is the Asian.
And more than the poacher, the middleman, who pays the fisherman 10 euros for every six live fish. A species with aphrodisiac and therapeutic properties, according to the belief of its greatest tasters.
The researchers believe that, in a province with the highest unemployment rate such as Cádiz, some have seen a gold mine in this activity and others have left retail or drug dealing, especially hashish, to dedicate themselves to this “business”. with less criminal risk, although it is economic, because, depending on the amount intervened, the fine can skyrocket.
Are there criminal organizations dedicated exclusively to this “business”? The Civil Guard has not yet determined it, but it is clear that for it to work, at least a small plot is needed to complete the chain, which begins in the Andalusian sea and ends at the consumer’s table in China.
Because another thing that the Seprona investigators have verified in their inspections and investigations is that sea shells do not end up in Chinese restaurants in Spain, not even in those in the province of Cádiz.
A dozen operations against the illegal fishing of sea cucumbers have been carried out by the Cadiz Command so far this year, which has seized approximately 600 kilos of this product.
Already in 2014, the Civil Guard arrested four people with 300 kilos on the Cadiz beach of La Caleta and, more recently, in Malaga they denounced another when they were surprised with 128 kilos. The Local Police of Cádiz has also made more than one intervention, like this same month of August when apprehending 200 kilos.
The chain begins in the sea with the poacher, who tries to fill his baskets with sea cucumbers (between 100 and 200 pieces), which he usually delivers alive and with water to the intermediary, since without it they would barely last two hours.
After delivery and payment of the agreed price, the product is transferred to rooftops to dehydrate it, because that is how it is exported to China and because in this way, it does not have conservation problems.
In addition, as the person in charge of Seprona points out, it is easier to camouflage among other merchandise that, in containers, may leave a Spanish port bound for China.
But for it to reach that final goal, the figure of the exporter appears in that small plot. In some cases, according to the researchers, it is the intermediary himself who sells it directly to his contact in China, and in others a third party collects the merchandise in Spain.
The investigations also reach the internet, because intermediaries offer their services through the network. Even the poacher himself, who “sells himself” as a great connoisseur of the best schools of sea clams.
Both in the middle of the work, and already on land, the Civil Guard and the local police continue to seize sea cucumbers in a constant trickle of interventions.
Their destination, as Sergeant García explains to Efe, is again the sea if they are alive. If they have already been dehydrated, Seprona transfers them to the facilities of the Fishing and Aquaculture Research and Training Center of Puerto de Santa María.
Meanwhile, poachers, in as yet unknown numbers, have grasped at this straw to save their ailing economies.
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