Police in Japan have arrested several people for allegedly poaching a huge haul of sea cucumbers – an unsightly but expensive delicacy that has attracted the attention of the country’s crime syndicates.
The five men were arrested for stealing more than 600kg of the marine creates in seas off Fukuoka, south-east Japan, in what local media are calling one of the largest sea cucumber-poaching incidents since the echinoderms achieved coveted status among criminals several years ago.
The aquatic animals are easy prey. They are not hard to catch and fetch high prices overseas due to a surge in demand in China and Hong Kong – earning them the nickname “black diamonds”.
Japan tightened laws on poaching and trading in illegally caught sea cucumbers – so named because their soft, tubular bodies resemble their namesake vegetable – in 2018, with violators facing up to three years in prison or a maximum fine of ¥30m (£181,000).
But the stiffer penalties do not appear to have deterred have some fishers and yakuza gangs seeking funds amid a police crackdown on their traditional sources of income and a sharp decline in membership.
The suspects in the most recent case include a male fisher and an executive at a marine products sales company. Two of the suspects allegedly used diving apparatus to secure 624kg of sea cucumbers in January, in an area where a local fisheries cooperative has the fishing rights, according to the Mainichi Shimbun.
The average wholesale price for sea cucumbers in Japan stood at ¥2,868 (£17.29) per kilogram in 2021 – compared to ¥623 two decades earlier – according to the agriculture ministry. The latest haul is estimated to have cost local fishers as much as ¥1.8 million, the Mainichi said.
In Japan, sea cucumbers are eaten as a pickled side dish, but shipments of poached creatures often end up in China, where they are used in traditional medicines.
Rising living standards on mainland China have fuelled demand, with high-quality sea cucumbers from Japan fetching the highest prices.
But catches in Japan are falling – from more than 10,300 tonnes in 2006 to 6,100 tonnes in 2020 – a decline the fisheries agency attributes to rampant poaching by crime syndicates.
In August 2020, 10 people were arrested on the northern main island of Hokkaido, after allegedly scuba diving for sea cucumbers. The men were later linked to the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s most powerful yakuza organisation.
Exporting illegally caught sea cucumbers has reportedly become as lucrative as the yakuza’s more traditional trade in stimulant drugs. In a typical heist, hauls are loaded on to speedboats that can outpace coast guard vessels and taken ashore to be transferred to trucks and prepared for export, according to SoraNews24.
