The Fish Bladder Exchange

How a dried swim bladder from the Sea of Cortez became among the most dangerous currencies on earth

In the spring of 2018, a Mexican naval patrol intercepted a panga boat drifting in the upper Gulf of California, just south of the Colorado River delta. The two men aboard were not carrying cocaine or methamphetamine; instead, wrapped in damp burlap in the hull, they carried sixty-three swim bladders from the totoaba, a fish so critically endangered tha…