Caught in Mumbai: 30 kg dried Seahorse meant for Chinese medicine being smuggled to Malaysia

Maharashtra State Mangrove Cell has arrested a 49-year old man during the wee hours of Thursday morning for smuggling 30 kg of dried Seahorse — a species protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act 1972. The man was first detained by the custom officials at the Mumbai International airport on Wednesday while he was on his way to board a Mumbai-Kuala Lumpur flight.

As per experts, seahorses are mostly collected from the coastal region of Southern India and are illegally smuggled to countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore where dried seahorses are used for making traditional Chinese medicines including aphrodisiac. Their smuggling commands a good but not fixed price tag.

Makarand Ghodke, Assistant Conservator of Forest (ACF), Mangrove Cell informed that it was during the bag scanning at the airport the CISF staff found the suspicious looking item, which was packed and then plastic wrapped in the bag belonging to the accused and alerted the Customs.

“On Wednesday around 10.30 pm officials from customs alerted me about the passenger (name withheld on request of Mangrove Cell) being detained for carrying dried sea horse following which our team including Range Forest Officer (RFO)- Prashant Deshmukh and Mayur Bothe reached the airport and we took his custody around 2 am after completing the official formalities,” Ghodke informed.

The accused was produced in the Andheri Metropolitan Magistrate court on Thursday and the Mangrove Cell was granted his custody for seven days.

On being arrested the accused first stated that he was simply the carrier who was promised Rs 30,000 along with transportation and stay for doing this work. “Initially he said that he was given the 30 kg package by someone in Sion, then he changed his statement and said he was given in Bengaluru then again he said he got it from Chennai.

He has been changing statements but now that we have his custody we will probe and find out how did he operate and if they are connected to other wildlife crimes,” he said.

Dr. Saket Badola, Head of TRAFFIC India — a wildlife trade monitoring network said that in recent times, there were several such cases were being reported including a seizure from Sikkim clearly indicating it was meant to be sent to China.

“Such large scale smuggling is a major worry as Seahorses are a critical species found in a very sensitive and fragile marine zone, which means their illegal extractions also puts a lot of pressure on this marine habitat as well.

"These are mostly smuggled for usage in traditional Chinese medicines,” he informed adding that due to lack of credible scientific assessment we are not in a position to even estimate the impact of this illegal extraction on its natural population.

Who are Seahorse:

• Are fishes and named due to the shape of their heads, which looks like that of a horse.
• They are not great swimmers.
• Use their tails to anchor themselves and avoid being swept.
• Seahorses pair for life.
• The males take care of pregnancy as the female deposits her eggs into the male's brood pouch, which he fertilizes and carries till they're ready to hatch.
• Seahorse babies called fry are independent after hatching.
• Are caught for the aquarium and traditional medicine trades.