Demand for fish bladder may wipe out world’s rarest ocean mammal

Bycatch: The extremely rare vaquita, a small porpoise, drowns in gill nets intended to catch totoaba, whose swim bladders command high prices on the Chinese market. Photo: IUCN

This Lunar New Year, if you’re planning to cook fish maw for the reunion dinner, make sure it is not the jin qian min or “golden coin maw”, otherwise you may be complicit in pushing not one, but two, critically endangered Mexican species to extinction – the totoaba fish and vaquita, a porpoise.

The totoaba is over-fished as its swim bladder (dried to make fish maw) is sought after in China and Hong Kong. The vaquita is not fished but is collateral damage – it is incidentally snared in nets put out for the totoaba.