The U.S. Coast Guard captured a lancha crew in the Gulf of Mexico with 200 pounds of fish illegally harvested in U.S. federal waters.

According to the U.S. government, Mexican fishers frequently use lanchas – fast 20-30-foot-long vessels – to cross into the United States’ Exclusive Economic Zone, harvest red snapper illegally, and then bring their fish back to Mexico. Often, the red snapper is then brought back over the U.S. border to sell, where it competes with legally sanctioned catch produced by American fishers.

On 28 January, Coast Guard crews collaborated to locate and stop three Mexican fishers operating illegally in U.S. waters.

“After interdicting the lanchas, Coast Guard personnel seized 200 pounds of red snapper, along with fishing gear and highflyers on board the vessels,” the Coast Guard said in a release. “Coast Guard crews detained the men, brought them ashore and transferred the detainees to U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel for further processing.”

The 200 pounds of red snapper was donated to the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi in Corpus Christi, Texas, U.S.A., to support the organization’s research into illegal fishing; and to Sea Turtle Inc. of South Padre Island, Texas, U.S.A., for turtle rehabilitation.

The incident comes amid increased U.S. pressure to stop illegal red snapper fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, an activity that U.S. fishers and lawmakers claim undermines domestic management.

In January, U.S. senators introduced the Illegal Red Snapper and Tuna Enforcement Act, a bill that would direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and NOAA develop a field test kit that can detect whether red snapper or certain species of tuna originated in foreign waters.

“Cartels and other criminal entities are illegally catching, importing, and selling red snapper and tuna to unwitting consumers and then using such profits to fund other illicit activities like drug smuggling and human trafficking,” U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), one of the sponsors of the legislation, said in a statement. “I am glad to join my colleagues in introducing this common-sense, bipartisan legislation to support U.S. fishermen, and I am hopeful Congress will act quickly to stop these dangerous criminal gangs.”

Last year, the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued sanctions against five Mexican individuals accused of enabling illegal red snapper fishing in the Gulf of Mexico in coordination with the Gulf Cartel.

“Today’s action highlights how transnational criminal organizations like the Gulf Cartel rely on a variety of illicit schemes like illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing to fund their operations, along with narcotics trafficking and human smuggling,” Acting Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley Smith said at the time. “Treasury, as part of a whole-of-government approach to combatting transnational criminal organizations, remains committed to disrupting these networks and restricting these groups’ ability to profit from these activities.”

Reporting by Nathan Strout. This article is posted with permission from Seafood Source.

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Nathan Strout is a Portland, Maine-based editor of SeafoodSource. Previously, Nathan covered the U.S. military’s space activities and emerging technologies at C4ISRNET and Defense News, where he won awards for his reporting on the U.S. Space Force’s missile warning capabilities. Nathan got his start in journalism writing about several communities in Midcoast Maine for a local daily paper, The Times Record.

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