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So far, an estimated number ballparks the Elephant population at almost half of what it was decades ago. At $3,000 per kilogram, the demand seems to only be increasing. Ivory is used for a variety of things, including dentures, musical instruments, billiard balls, and even the whites in the eyes of statues. No matter what the use, a devastating reality is the slaughtering and illegal poaching of these beautiful creatures for superficial purposes.
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.