From South America to Asia, seahorses vanish into trafficking pipeline

In June 2025, Ecuadorian police seized a package containing almost 3,000 seahorses that were likely destined for Colombia.
Most seahorses are caught in industrial and artisanal trawl nets as bycatch, but they are then funneled into a lucrative illegal trade.
Researchers have identified the busiest trafficking routes: Peru to China, Hong Kong and Vietnam.
Seahorses are in high demand for use in traditional Chinese medicine, and are also sold as trinkets and as exotic additions to aquariums.

In June 2025, Ecuadorian police were summoned to the municipal bus terminal in Tulcán, in the northern province of Carchi, to investigate a suspicious package. Someone had reported a strong odor coming from a parcel that was shipped by bus from Guayaquil. Inside, police discovered its grisly contents: 2,970 dead seahorses.

Authorities suspect they were en route to Colombia and then onward to Southeast Asia, headed into the illegal wildlife trade. The box weighed about 10 kilograms (22 pounds); its value on the black market could be anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000 per kilo, Édison Fuertes, an officer with the National Police’s Environmental Protection Unit, told the Ecuadorian press.

Two alleged offenders were identified: Their names appeared on the package’s shipping and receiving invoices. Because the investigation is ongoing, their names have been withheld. But the Ministry of Environment, Water, and Ecological Transition (MAATE, the Spanish acronym) disclosed that they were an Ecuadorian and “allegedly a person of Asian origin but of Ecuadoran nationality.”

The seahorses were likely pulled from waters off the southern province of Guayas, according to MAATE, bound for Asian markets.

All 47 of the world’s seahorse species are threatened, including Ecuador’s native species, the Pacific seahorse (Hippocampus ingens) that swims the Eastern Pacific from California to Chile and lives among the Galápagos Islands. These tiny fish live in seagrasses, mangroves and coral reefs, habitats that provide refuge and offer structures that seahorses can hold on to with their prehensile tails.

But overfishing and commercial demand is taking an increasing toll on these charismatic, vulnerable fish.

In early May, the Ecuadorian police intercepted a package containing nearly 3,000 seahorses that was destined for Colombia. Image courtesy of the National Police of Ecuador.

Big threats to a small fish

Seahorses face a litany of threats. Their coastline habitat is being decimated for hotels, houses and other developments. A soup of pollutants flows into the sea, and a rapidly warming ocean is altering the entire system, according to Project Seahorse, a U.S.-based organization dedicated to marine conservation.

But fishing and trafficking are among the greatest threats. Seahorses are swept up in nets that capture everything that swims by. “A lot of seahorses die because of fishing trawls,” says Michel Guerrero, an Ecuadorian marine biologist. Globally, more than 70 million are caught each year. Captured as bycatch, they’re then funneled into the illegal wildlife trade, mainly to mainland China and Hong Kong.

Seahorses are sold alive to aquarium enthusiasts. However, most are dried and sold as crafts online, peddled as souvenirs in coastal curio shops, with the greatest demand coming from the traditional Chinese medicine market. According to MAATE, the dried specimens are powdered for use in a wide range of remedies. Seahorses have long been used as a purported cure for infertility, baldness, asthma and arthritis, among other maladies.

Wildlife seizure data collected by TRAFFIC, a nonprofit specializing in monitoring the illegal wildlife trade, revealed the shocking scale of the seahorse trade: They’re among the top three taxa traded (by volume). Millions of them, from more than 30 species, are traded between at least 80 countries.

TRAFFIC found that most of these smuggled seahorses came from Latin American and Caribbean waters. Peru is a smuggling hotspot, acting as one of the main transit countries for illegal trade in innumerable species — including seahorses — and ranked second to mainland China in the number of seahorses seized by officials.

Seahorses live in areas with undersea vegetation. Image courtesy of Mark Rosenstein/iNaturalist.

The need for protection

This massive demand is why international trade is now regulated for every seahorse species under CITES, the global convention on the international wildlife trade. Seahorses are listed in CITES Appendix II, which means traders must obtain export permits, certify that the fish were harvested sustainably, and ensure that the trade doesn’t harm wild populations. Ecuadorian protections go even further, prohibiting all capture of seahorses.

Seahorses are just one species among thousands threatened by the illegal wildlife trade. It’s a high-profit, low-risk industry run by organized criminal organizations, a rampant, global industry that involves at least 6,000 species. Experts note that seahorses are sometimes trafficked alongside elephant ivory, pangolin scales, or other high-value wildlife products.

In 2024, officials of the Agency for Regulation, Control and Health Surveillance of Ecuador found desiccated seahorses at a Chinese restaurant in a seaside town. Image courtesy of ARCSA.

In a recent study published in the journal Conservation Biology, researchers noted that the seahorse trade is “poorly documented and largely unaddressed.” Globally, it seems that export bans have driven the trade underground. An analysis of seahorse imports from 2016-2017 revealed that 95% (by mass) came from countries with trade suspensions.

Bycatch

Trawl fishing has been prohibited in Ecuador since 2013. However, it’s still practiced, according to sources close to the Vice Ministry of Aquaculture and Fisheries for Ecuador, who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons. Seahorses also fall into lobster nets — another prohibited form of fishing.

Industrial fishing fleets operate about 13 kilometers (8 miles) off the coast. Some of the most damaging are shrimp trawlers that target titi shrimp (Protrachypene precipua). The fishers throw huge nets from their boats that extend to the seabed, walling off the entire water column. These nets engulf everything in their path, including every type of fish and mollusk that lives undersea.

Seahorses take cover between soft corals in Punta Vicente Roca, Galápagos. Image courtesy of Michel Guerrero.

When fishers pull up their nets, they pull out commercially valuable species, including shrimp, hake (Merluccius gayi), fourspot flounder (Hippoglossina tetrophthalma) — and seahorses. They toss the rest overboard: the wounded, the dead, and sea animals that have little market interest.

“It’s harmful. It’s like using a bulldozer on the seabed, everything gets destroyed,” Guerrero says.

According to the Ecuadorian National Police, most trafficked seahorses are caught accidentally, and a study published in the journal PLOS ONE backs this up: They’re trapped in fishing nets and gear used to catch other species.

The authors note that with unknown amounts of bycatch, it’s difficult to estimate how many are caught. “The non-intentional extraction hinders the recollection of data about the size of the collected specimens and the specific exploitation of each species,” they wrote.

Seahorses seized in Peru. Image courtesy of Oceana Perú.

Ecuador’s poor enforcement of fishing violations brought sanctions from CITES in 2024. It wasn’t over seahorses, however; CITES found discrepancies between export and import numbers of shark fins between Ecuador and Peru.

Guerrero says he doesn’t rule out the possibility of poachers who fish for seahorses. Hippocampus ingens is the biggest of all the seahorses, reaching 30 centimeters (12 inches), so diving fishers can catch them with their bare hands, with small nets or — as observed by the Vice Ministry of Aquaculture and Fishing — plastic bags. Fishers are paid $1 or less for each seahorse. In Hong Kong, they retail for $3-$5.

They suffer a painful death

Seahorses that survive capture in a trawler’s net often die later. The traffickers use various ways to preserve them for transport onward; some are boiled alive, then dried, according to the National Police. Another method is salting, says MAATE: dehydrating them with salt inhibits bacterial growth and prolongs preservation. They’re also dried in the sun or in rudimentary ovens, and needles are used to keep their tails curled, which is attractive for the souvenir trade.

Dried seahorses in a shop in Hong Kong, where they can be easily found. Image courtesy of HK1.

Traffickers then classify them by size and color. They pack them carefully, often in sealed bags or flasks to avoid damage during shipment, which occurs by land, sea or air, hidden in postal packages or amid commercial merchandise. Experts note that airports are ground zero, with most shipments discovered in personal baggage.

Guerrero says that until recently, seahorses were mostly sold as souvenirs in coastal areas. That has changed, with officials intercepting growing volumes of overland shipments, often bound for Peru.

Researchers from Project Seahorse found that nearly 5 million specimens were seized from 2010-2021, valued at more than $21 million. However, Project Seahorse notes that its study was based on available online information, and with many shipments slipping past authorities, these numbers are likely only “the tip of the iceberg.”

Trafficking to Asia, muddy numbers in Ecuador

For trafficked seahorses, Latin America is just a pit stop. The busiest trafficking route is from Peru to mainland China, Hong Kong and Vietnam. Research shows the highest share of seizures occurred in China (40%); Peru ranked second with 17%; and Vietnam third with 14%.

Seahorses’ illegal trafficking routes. Image courtesy of Sara J. Foster.

The numbers of seahorses trafficked in Ecuador aren’t clear. So far in 2025, MAATE has confiscated 2,947 specimens. Police registered 2,970 in Carchi alone, plus six in Guayaquil and 21 in Quito. Neither included the highly publicized discovery of 19 seahorses that were seized alongside about 200,000 shark fins in an operation carried out on March 20 in Ecuador’s west-central Manabí province.

In April 2025, an institutional operation found 19 seahorses in a house in Manta. Image courtesy of the State Attorney General’s Office.

In 2021, Ecuadorian police stopped a carrying 213 seahorses at the Guayaquil airport. Image courtesy of the National Police.

Seahorse fishing, especially directed fishing, seriously impacts wild populations by altering the ecological balance, the National Police told Mongabay Latam. Seahorses eat small crustaceans, keeping their numbers in check. They’re also indicators of environmental health.

Fishing controls need to be strengthened to protect these “iconic” species, Guerrero says, simply because their basic biology makes them unique in the animal kingdom: It’s the male that gestates and gives birth to tiny, fully developed offspring.

Banner image: A seahorse is camouflaged between sea algae in Punta Vicente Roca, Galápagos. Image courtesy of Michel Guerrero.

This article was first published here in Spanish on 1 July, 2025.

CITES halts Ecuador’s shark trade; trafficking persists amid lack of transparency

Citations:

Foster, S. J., Ascione, S. J., Santaniello, F., & Phelps Bondaroff, T. N. (2025). Using online reports of seahorse seizures to track their illegal trade. Conservation Biology, 39(5), e70047, doi:10.1111/cobi.70047

Kumaraval, K., Ravichandran, S., Balasubramanian, T., & Sonneschein, L. (2012). Seahorses — A source of traditional medicine. Natural Product Research, 26(24), 23330-2334. doi:10.1080/14786419.2012.662650

Foster, S., Wiswedel, S., & Vincent, A. (2016). Opportunities and challenges for analysis of wildlife trade using CITES data — Seahorses as a case study. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems, 26(1), 154-172. doi:10.1002/aqc.2493

Foster, S. J., Kuo, T. C., Wan, A. K. Y., & Vincent, A. C. J. (2019). Global seahorse trade defies export bans under CITES action and national legislation. Marine Policy, 103, 33-41. doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2019.01.014

Boehm, J. T., Bovee, E., Harris, S. E., Eddins, K., Akahoho, I., Foster, M., … Waldman, J. (2023). The United States dried seahorse trade: A comparison of traditional Chinese medicine and ecommerce-curio markets using molecular identification. PLOS ONE, 18(10), e0291874. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0291874