Millions of seahorses worth $29M smuggled illegally, study finds

Charlotte Lepage · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 08, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 8 hours ago

Nearly 5 cardinal smuggled seahorses were seized globally by authorities implicit a 10-year period, Canadian researchers found, informing it's lone the "tip of the iceberg" successful an amerciable commercialized that is apt acold larger successful scale.

To way however wide the contented is, researchers astatine the University of British Columbia pored implicit nationalist seizure reports and quality stories shared betwixt 2010 and 2021, uncovering astir 300 seizures of seahorses involving 62 antithetic countries. 

In total, the 5 cardinal seahorses seized were worthy an estimated $29 cardinal ($21 cardinal US), they said successful a survey precocious published Conservation Biology.

Dried seahorses are often sought for usage successful accepted medicine. The astir communal destinations for them are China and Hong Kong, the survey found, but they tin beryllium purchased successful Canada online and successful accepted medicine shops.

Because the study's blimpish estimates are lone drawn from nationalist records, the "real standard of amerciable seahorse commercialized volition beryllium overmuch bigger," said Sarah Foster, pb writer and a researcher astatine UBC's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, who is besides programme pb astatine Project Seahorse, a marine conservation organization.

While nary of the study's publically reported seizures were in Canada, 19 "enforcement files" related to seahorses person been opened since 2020, according to a connection from Environment and Climate Change Canada. That includes 15 successful the Pacific region, "primarily involving dried seahorses oregon seahorse-based products (e.g., accepted medicines oregon supplements)."

A tangled network

The survey besides offers details connected smuggling methods and the complexity of smuggling routes, said Foster.

Most seahorse seizures progressive rider luggage successful airports, but the largest volumes were moved by ship, she said. In the oversea cargos, they were often traded alongside different wildlife, similar pangolins, elephant ivory, penguin scales, oversea cucumbers and shark fins. 

"So successful devising strategies to find and emblem amerciable seahorse trade, authorities volition besides beryllium helping to code that contented for different marine and different wildlife species," said Foster.

In 1 antithetic seizure recorded in Vietnam, the seahorses seemingly came from Peru; but erstwhile authorities looked into the species, they recovered that they were primitively from West Africa.

"These seahorses had gone [from] West Africa, [to] Peru, [and] Vietnam connected their way, purportedly, to yet extremity up successful mainland China," she said.

To antagonistic this planetary trade, governments request to enactment unneurotic to stock accusation and strategies connected however to drawback smugglers, said Foster. And much importantly, she added, defender against the menace to the taxon and biodiversity.

Ripple effect of the trade

Seahorses tin beryllium legally traded nether rules outlined by the Convention of International Trade successful Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), an statement signed by 183 countries, including Canada.

Exporters are required to person a permit, proving their commercialized is monitored, legally sourced and doesn't harm populations.

"Those permits are very, precise hard to get," said Max Valentine, run manager of amerciable sportfishing and transparency for Oceana, an planetary advocacy enactment for water conservation. 

"Most of this amerciable commercialized is [from] radical who are not catching them with the permits, oregon with the regulations successful place."

Currently, 2 seahorse taxon are considered critically endangered, and different 13 are considered susceptible to extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Illegal harvesting has superior repercussions not conscionable connected seahorse populations, but besides connected the underwater situation arsenic a whole, said Valentine. 

Seahorses are usually caught by bottommost trawling — utilizing large, weighed-down nets dragged crossed the water level — which Valentine says is "widely considered 1 of the astir destructive sportfishing practices connected the planet." 

"[The nets] rip up each of the situation that they travel successful interaction with," she said. "By the clip they've pulled these nets retired of the water, everything is already dead. So we've mislaid each of that biomass, each of those organisms from the environment."

Taking seahorses retired of the situation besides disrupts the nutrient chain, she said, affecting the populations seahorses provender disconnected of, and those that devour them, too. 

Saving the oversea 1 seahorse astatine a time

Valentine said erstwhile she archetypal heard of this "bombshell" seahorse smuggling study, she was "shocked and appalled."

"To larn that there's been specified a devastating harvest, amerciable harvest of these taxon … is truly disappointing."

By shedding airy connected the issues seahorses face, the study's authors accidental they anticipation they tin bring attraction to the broader threats encountered by marine life.

"People truly emotion seahorses, they seizure people's imagination," said Foster. "We're fond of saying, by redeeming seahorses we volition prevention the seas."