<description>&lt;p&gt;Few outside the Chinese wedding banquet circuit have heard of fish maw, a flavourless, unappetising-looking swim bladder found in bony fish. In dried form, a kilo from the right species goes for around $150,000 on the world market, double the price of a kilogram of cocaine. The most prized maw is found in one of the remotest corners of the planet, the Kikori Delta in southern Papua New Guinea, where the once ignored scaly croaker is being targeted on an industrial scale by Chinese fishing companies, transforming the lives of villagers&amp;mdash;and the ecosystem. Louisa and Graeme are joined by Jo Chandler, an award-winning journalist and senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne&amp;rsquo;s Centre for Advancing Journalism who &lt;a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03259-8"&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; on the fish maw trade for Nature magazine.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Image: c/- Jo Chandler, &lt;a href="https://www.edo.org.au/2022/11/28/loss-and-damage-a-png-villages-submission-to-the-un-special-rapporteur-on-human-rights-and-climate-change/"&gt;Veraibari Village&lt;/a&gt; 2024.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Jo&amp;rsquo;s fieldwork was supported in part by the Walkley Foundation Sean Dorney Grant for Pacific Journalism.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener"&gt;omnystudio.com/listener&lt;/a&gt; for privacy information.&lt;/p&gt;</description>

The Little Red Podcast

Graeme Smith and Louisa Lim

Give me Maw: China's Craze for the Cocaine of the Seas

DEC 10, 202442 MIN
The Little Red Podcast

Give me Maw: China's Craze for the Cocaine of the Seas

DEC 10, 202442 MIN

Description

Few outside the Chinese wedding banquet circuit have heard of fish maw, a flavourless, unappetising-looking swim bladder found in bony fish. In dried form, a kilo from the right species goes for around $150,000 on the world market, double the price of a kilogram of cocaine. The most prized maw is found in one of the remotest corners of the planet, the Kikori Delta in southern Papua New Guinea, where the once ignored scaly croaker is being targeted on an industrial scale by Chinese fishing companies, transforming the lives of villagers—and the ecosystem. Louisa and Graeme are joined by Jo Chandler, an award-winning journalist and senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism who reported on the fish maw trade for Nature magazine. 

Image: c/- Jo Chandler, Veraibari Village 2024.

Jo’s fieldwork was supported in part by the Walkley Foundation Sean Dorney Grant for Pacific Journalism.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.