MEXICO CITY: The Mexican Attorney General’s Office seized more than 800 kilos (1,760 lbs.) of endangered marine species from an Oriental restaurant and a private home in the port city of Guaymas, in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora, authorities said Saturday.
Discovered in the restaurant and the residence was seafood in the form of “19.16 kilos (42.2 lbs.) of dried seahorses, 1 kilo (2.2 lbs.) more of that species fresh and frozen, 271.5 kilos (598 lbs.) of sea cucumbers that had been dried and 648.1 kilos (1,427.5 lbs.) more that were already cooked,” the Attorney General’s Office, or PGR, said in a bulletin.
The confiscation of these species, which are protected by law in Mexico, occurred during an inspection carried out by federal agents, the bulletin said.
The entire haul was handed over to the Specialized Unit for the Investigation of Crimes against the Environment.
The authorities also reported this Saturday the arrest of three Chinese nationals last July 25 at Tijuana International Airport, in the northern Mexican state of Baja California, as they were attempting to smuggle 274 specimens of the endangered totoaba fish out of the country. EFE
