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Pangolin scales, which are used for medicinal purposes, can cost about $3,000 per kilogram. The Pangolin, which typically weighs anywhere from 80-85 lbs, or 31-38 kilograms, can be harvested completely to roughly $10,000 per animal! Add in the scales and you could be looking at a substantial payday. Cambodia, seized over 3,500 animals in 2014, and arrested 125 poachers illegally killing these animals. Authorities have said that seizures have declined, however they say the reason is because of a decline in the Pangolin population as a whole; so it isn’t exactly good news.
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.