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While there reportedly isn’t much of a market in the United States for bear bile, otherwise known as gall bladder fluid, can go for an unbelievable $220,000 per pound! This bear fluid is worth 4 times its own weight in gold! So just what’s so special about it? It is apparently one of the most valuable pieces of research for future medicine. While the gallbladder itself is connected to the liver on one end, and the small intestine on the other, scientists have applied this fluid to countless trials for future medications.
The fish you mean is the ‘totoaba’ – Cynoscion macdonaldi, the Mexican giant croaker.
The Chinese are hardly the only culprits in the decimation of the totoaba. While the Chinese prize their recipe for Seen Kow (a rare, regal, expensive soup-stock), which is made from the totoaba’s ‘buche’ (air bladder), through the 1960s, southern Californians ran through huge quantities ‘Totuava Filet’ packets that were sold openly in the supermarkets, oblivious to the industrial-scale slaughter of the giant fish 150-miles away in the northern Sea of Cortez.