Narcotrafficking gangs operating out of Manabí, a coastal province of Ecuador, are also involved in trafficking shark fins alongside their drug operations, according to a recent investigation by Ecuadorian news agency Código Vidrio.
Evidence from wiretaps, surveillance and raids seen by Código Vidrio reporters suggests that gangs are capturing and finning sharks and transporting the fins as a secondary income stream alongside cocaine and fuel.
According to Código Vidrio, Ecuadorian police say that shark fin shipments pass through the Galápagos Islands, where fins are preserved and stored, en route to Asia.
Carlos Ortega, the head of Ecuador’s antinarcotics police, told Código Vidrio that authorities seized two fishing vessels in 2024 and 2025 near the Galápagos carrying a combined 27 metric tons of shark fins. In both cases, the crews were on the same route that criminal groups use to deliver cocaine to Central America and the U.S., Ortega said.
Shark fishing is illegal in Ecuador, but a 2007 law allows for the sale of sharks caught as bycatch. This loophole has since made Ecuador a top exporter of shark fins, despite the ban on targeted fishing.
Código Vidrio’s findings follow an October 2025 Mongabay Latam investigation that revealed that Los Choneros and Los Lobos, two drug gangs, had teamed up with sea pirates to expand into fishing. Artisanal fishers in Ecuador and Peru told Mongabay the gangs had seized control of ports and forced fishers to pay them part of their earnings.
Other fishers are pushed into the high-risk activity of assisting the gangs in shipping drugs. The gangs make use of the small fishing boats, and the fishers’ expertise in navigating the Pacific, to transport drugs out to sea in several small boats. These shipments are then loaded onto larger vessels at sea.
After the drug delivery, the fishers begin casting hooked lines to catch sharks.
According to Código Vidrio, a fisher can make tens of thousands of euros for a successful drug shipment. Those who opt out remain at the mercy of the gangs in the open seas.
“Fishermen turn to these activities because of the insecurity at sea,” Freddy Sarzosa, a retired police general told Código Vidrio. “They are robbed by pirates, their outboard motors are stolen, and there are also critical factors like lack of job alternatives and precarious employment.”
The drug gangs’ expansion into illegal fishing has created a surge of violence. In 2024, 24 fishers were killed in Peru. Another 45 were killed in Ecuador, up from five in 2014.
“Friends of ours have died, several of them, shot in the head. They execute them. They [the pirates] carry rifles, good weapons,” a fisherman from Puerto Pizarro, a fishing town in northwestern Peru, told Mongabay Latam. “Why are they so heavily armed? Because of drugs. Drugs are gold.”
Banner image: Artisanal fishing boats. Image by Mongabay Latam.
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