Mexican drug cartels are fishing in Gulf waters

If you’re a permitted recreational angler in Louisiana, you can catch four red snapper per day that are at least 16 inches in length and the fishing season begins May 1^st. Most fishing enthusiasts abide by these rules, but there’s actually a dark underbelly to the catching and sales of red snapper and it involves Mexican drug cartels.

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Professor Kesley Banks is a Research Scientist at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi and has unique insight into this seemingly strange overlap happening just off Louisiana’s shores in the Gulf of Mexico. She says cartels just off the coast are creating illegal fishing operations while delivering drugs and other cargo at the same time.

However, many of those who are actually doing the illegal fishing are being forced to by drug cartels rather than voluntarily doing so. "They're told they're going fishing today. So, the fishermen that are actually in the boat are not the ones who are necessarily profiting. Many times, they're forced manual labor for the cartel," Banks went on to emphasize.

"There's a lot of profit involved. If a fish is going for $30/lb and you're bringing in 3,000 lbs at a time, that's a pretty big bang for your buck right there," Banks points out. She says many of the boats involved are doing double or triple duty, as a great many of them come to ports to drop off drugs or people, then set a fishing line while they're out.

Adding insult to injury, many of the illegally caught fish are sold right back to Louisiana consumers without them knowing about it. "They take fish that are out of season or undersize, take them back to Mexico, then sell it back to us. They get a fake 'legal trip ticket' which allows them to legally import what they've illegally harvested out of our waters," adds Professor Banks. "This is a real slap in the face and it makes it harder to manage our population of red snapper and other species sustainably if they keep being illegally removed," she went on to point out.