Foreign Policy Quotes Ian Urbina on China's Distant-Water Sea Cucumber Fleets

An article by Tom Brown and Pragathi Ravi in Foreign Policy, an American publication focused on international politics, looks at the global black market in sea cucumbers, an Asian delicacy that has become a form of currency in the criminal underworld, linking Chinese buyers, Mexican cartels, and Japanese crime groups.

Ian Urbina, founder of the Outlaw Ocean Institute, appears in the section on China’s distant-water fleets, which venture far from Chinese territorial waters in pursuit of sea cucumbers and offer local fishers high prices, triggering mass harvesting. “Everything will be gone within 24 hours,” Urbina says, adding that local communities also take part, making it a more complicated story than one of simple victims and perpetrators.