Cocaine, Marijuana… Jellyfish? Cartels Muscle in on New Export Business – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

For decades the fishermen around the Santa Clara gulf in the Mexican state of Sonora have lived from fishing and selling jellyfish, a product that has no market in Mexico but sells well in Asia. This year the local industry was expecting a good season. But now the Sinaloa Cartel wants a piece of the multimillion business.

The “cannonball jellyfish” is one of a dozen sea products exported from Mexico to Singapore and Vietnam and leaving over $10 million in revenue during a three-month season, according to Mexican fishing authorities.

By this time of the year, the fishermen should be already processing tons of jellyfish to be sent to other major Mexican companies who run the export side of business. But June is over and no fisherman has dared to get into the sea. The threat is real: Heavily-armed cartel members are making sure no one goes out to fish.

“They want us to work for them exclusively, but we are afraid, we really don’t know what to do,” a local fisherman in the small city of Guaymas, Sonora, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation from the cartel, told The Daily Beast.

To be ready for exportation, the jellyfish needs to get dehydrated using tons of salt, a part of the process that only a “salina” (an industrial salt processing company) can do. Years earlier these companies worked together with the local fishermen, buying their product and then processing the jellyfish and exporting it themselves to different companies in Asia, mostly in…