Seahorse Trafficking: A $28 Million Black Market You’ve Never Heard Of
Dried, smuggled, and sold as medicine - the silent slaughter of the sea’s most delicate icon.
They are curious little creatures, like something drawn from folklore rather than science. Seahorses do not swim so much as drift, upright, fragile and otherworldly. They are poor swimmers, terrible breeders and woefully unprepared for the modern world. Yet, there is a demand for them and they are disappearing in their millions.
In fact, in just over a decade, nearly five million seahorses have been seized by law enforcement across the world. Removed from black market shipments bound primarily for one destination: China. These are just the ones we know about. The real number trafficked illegally is undoubtedly far higher.
This is not a story you will see on the 9 o’clock news or trending on social media. It should be. What is happening to seahorses is symptomatic of a much larger and more dangerous problem… our complete failure to police the illegal marine wildlife trade.
The underworld of the ocean
The illegal wildlife trade is one of the largest black markets on Earth, estimated to be worth up to $23 billion per year. When people hear that figure, they picture ivory, rhino horn, or pangolin scales. They do not picture a shoebox of dried seahorses tucked into someone’s luggage at Hong Kong International Airport.
That is exactly how most of this trade happens. Quietly. Invisibly. Through passenger baggage, sea cargo, the postal service. It is a trafficking network so vast that even experts are stunned by how little attention it receives.
Seahorses were the first marine fish ever listed on CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. That happened nearly two decades ago. They should, in theory, be protected by international law. Many countries, including India, Vietnam and the Philippines, have banned their export entirely.
What this new research shows, using over 300 online seizure records, is that the bans are not working. The trade has simply gone underground. The world has looked the other way.
What the data tells us
This important research was led by Project Seahorse and OceansAsia, who compiled and analysed over a decade’s worth of open-source seizure records. Between 2010 and 2021, they tracked 297 seizures of illegal seahorse shipments. These totalled nearly five million individuals and were valued at over $28 million. That is the minimum. Those are the ones we know about. Most seizures happened in transit or at the destination, not at the source. Enforcement is failing where it matters most.
The vast majority of seahorses were dried. They are used primarily in traditional Chinese medicine, where they are believed to boost fertility, vitality and treat a host of ailments. They are also sold as curios, souvenirs and for aquarium trade.
China was the primary destination. Vietnam was close behind. Peru was one of the largest sources and also one of the largest transit countries. That is important because it points to something even more troubling; species are being poached in West Africa, shipped to Peru and then on to Asia. That suggests a level of sophistication and scale we are not yet addressing.
Ghosts of an ecosystem
Seahorses are not just beautiful. They are essential. They are predators of small crustaceans and live among seagrasses, coral reefs and mangroves. They play a vital role in the balance of these ecosystems. Remove them, and the ecosystem changes. It may not collapse overnight. It weakens. Bit by bit. Until one day it fails.
This is not just a conservation story. It is a systems story. A story of how fragile the ocean really is, and how little we seem to care.
As someone who has spent years working in marine conservation, I am constantly stunned by how much attention terrestrial species receive. Meanwhile, marine animals die in silence. People donate to save elephants, not seahorses. Policymakers rally around tigers, not toadfish. The ocean is our planet’s life support system.
The CITES illusion
One of the biggest takeaways from this research is that CITES, as it stands, is failing marine species.
Seahorses were listed on Appendix II of CITES to regulate their trade, not ban it. When key source countries banned exports altogether, the trade just went underground. We are not seeing fewer seahorses being sold. We are just seeing fewer of them legally recorded.
The problem goes well beyond seahorses. CITES has also listed various species of whales, dolphins, sharks, rays, and corals, yet illegal trade and exploitation continue. Whales are hunted under 'scientific exemptions' that defy the spirit of the convention. Dolphin exports still occur under vague loopholes. Even high-profile species like great white sharks and manta rays are regularly trafficked despite their listings.
CITES is a powerful tool. It relies entirely on national governments to implement and enforce it. In many cases, they do not. Others cannot. Some are complicit.
Until we start holding governments accountable for enforcing CITES and funding the agencies that carry out the work, this pattern will repeat. Not just for seahorses. For all marine life.
How do we fix it?
This is not hopeless. There are solutions. They require us to care about marine species in a way we currently do not.
Enforce at the source. Interceptions in destination countries are too late. We need to stop poaching and trafficking where it begins.
Train customs officers. Most are not trained to recognise dried seahorses, let alone identify species. Better training, and use of forensic DNA, could change that.
Close legal loopholes. Export bans mean nothing if enforcement is non-existent. CITES must grow teeth.
Talk about this. We need public pressure and political will. None of that happens if the public is unaware.
Final thoughts
I started my career in ocean conservation because I was drawn to its mystery. The deep. The vastness. The creatures no one else seemed to notice. Nowhere is that more true than with seahorses.
We are losing them. By the million.
It should make headlines. It should spark outrage. More than anything, it should make us reflect on what it says about us. About our values. About which creatures are worth saving.
If we cannot protect seahorses, strange, beautiful, barely understood, then what are we really protecting at all?
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