11 prosecuted over fish swim bladder smuggling

GUANGZHOU, March 7 (Xinhua) -- A total of 11 people have been prosecuted in south China's Guangdong Province for smuggling fish swim bladders worth more than 800 million yuan (119 million U.S. dollars).

According to the Guangdong provincial procuratorate, the suspects smuggled about 20,000 smuggling swim bladders of the totoaba fish found in the Gulf of California in Mexico and sold them to domestic customers.

The group operated for more than three years before they were caught, prosecutors said.

The totoaba, or Totoaba macdonaldi, has become a rare species and is listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.