Mozambique: Seahorse smuggler charged with environmental crimes

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Mozambique: Seahorse smuggler charged with environmental crimes

3:36 CAT | 23 Jun 2021

Photo: O País

The Public Prosecutor’s Office has charged a Chinese national with environmental crimes that carry a prison sentence of between 12 and 16 years, reports the independent television station, STV.

The Chinese citizen, whose name was not given in the STV report, was caught in possession of nine kilos of dried seahorses. All species of seahorse are protected in Mozambique, and fishing for them is prohibited.

The accused intended to take the seahorses to China for use in the fraudulent racket known as “Chinese traditional medicine”. He would have sold them for 1,800 US dollars a kilo. He says he purchased them from local fishermen for between 30 and 50 meticais (between 47 and 79 US cents a kilo).

So the Chinese national would have made a profit of well over 15,300 dollars on the sale of these fish. The Mozambican fishermen who caught the seahorses had no idea how much these animals are worth on the Chinese market.

It is said that seahorses can cure a variety of ailments, including impotence, and they are also used to induce labour in pregnant women. In reality, there is no evidence that consuming seahorses will cure any medical condition at all.

But the demand from the Asian market, including not only China, but also Indonesia, the Philippines and Korea, may be driving the 46 species of seahorse towards extinction. It is feared that around 20 million of these small fish are caught every year.

The Mozambican authorities suspect that the seahorses were acquired as the result of illegal fishing in the Bazaruto Archipelago National Park, off the coast of the Inhambane districts of Vilankulo and Inhassoro.

The seizure of the dried seahorses was possible because the police received a tip-off from people living near the Vilankulo house used by the Chinese citizen.

In addition to the prison term, the Public Prosecutor is proposing that the accused should be fined 250 times the monthly minimum wage. This works out at about 1.2 million meticais (around 18,000 dollars). The property registered in the accused’s name in Vilankulo should be seized by the Mozambican state, the prosecution argues.

Source: AIM