There was nothing unusual as the Tiger Pearl sailed from the Chennai port in the first week of July with a consignment of red chillies. The vessel was nearing Singapore, its destination, when the agents at the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) smelled something fishy. On a tip-off that the ship was carrying a prohibited item, they called back the vessel in an unprecedented move. When it reached Chennai port on July 22, beneath seven sacks of chillies was a hot item-2.24 tonnes of dried seahorses and pipefish, valued at Rs 13.44 crore in the international market.

MAKING A KILLING: The seahorse is on top of the smugglers' list

Seahorses are an endangered species included in Schedule I of India's Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, and listed in Appendix II of the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna. But laws mean little in the Gulf of Mannar along the south Tamil Nadu coast, one of the last few natural habitats of the quaint-looking seahorse. Across the seas, in China, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan there is a huge demand for it, thanks to myths about its aphrodisiacal qualities. But for the marine species, known for its unusual mating dance that lasts for hours, it doesn't bode well.

The July 22 haul, the biggest ever of seahorses in India, is a pointer to disturbing trends. While the Chennai port is becoming a haven for smugglers catering to the Southeast Asian market, the Gulf of Mannar is being robbed of its marine wealth. Apart from 3,600 species of flora and fauna, it has five species of seahorses. Only a couple of weeks ago the Fisheries College and Research Institute in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu, identified a new species of thorny seahorse called Hippocampus histrix.

While official investigations on the smuggling centred on the Chennai port, India Today decided to snoop around the source, the Gulf of Mannar which comprises the districts of Ramanathapuram, Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari. Here seahorses are for sale. Contact any of the link in the network of fishermen, wholesale seafood dealers and exporters. With enough money one can easily pocket a specimen (see box).

The fishermen defy orders and sail to the 21 coral islands in the Gulf of Mannar for ornamental fish and other rare marine animals. "On certain days, I net as many as 50 seahorses," says Jamal, a fisherman at the Keelaikarai village, 17 km from Ramanathapuram. "Regular buyers don't go for the seahorse as it is not edible. But there are people who buy them for medicinal preparations." Says Abdul, another fisherman: "We don't get many seahorses in one catch, so we dry them and sell them in bulk." All for a pittance. Wholesale dealers sell it to smugglers who make a killing by exporting it.

The lack of coordination between government departments and enforcement agencies, plus inadequate manpower and outdated equipment make the poacher's job easier. The Gulf of Mannar division of the Forest Department, set up in 1991 as the guardian agency of the Mannar Marine National Park, has become a synonym for the government's apathy towards environment.

One-third of Tamil Nadu's 1,000 km coastline comes under the Gulf of Mannar division but it has barely any resources. A sparse staff of 18 members inspects an area of 10,500 sq km that includes four ranges, Mandapam, Keelaikarai, Thoothukudi and Ramanathapuram, and 104 villages. There is no four-wheeler to patrol the place. The Ramanathapuram range doesn't even have a boat. The forest range officer has vintage 410 musket rifles with rusty bullets and no cartridges. The cell phone age is some distance away for the staff who carry wireless sets which are of no use in deep seas.

"It is not just the fishermen, there are bigger players in the racket who move around in speed boats. What can we do without men and equipment?" asks A. Thirunjanasambandam, forest range officer at Ramanathapuram. In May this year, smugglers carrying 880 bags of sea cucumber, another protected species, escaped after injuring the Ramanathapuram division Wildlife Department warden V. Naganathan who did not have a weapon even to defend himself. "We are trying out best to spread awareness on preserving rare and endangered species, but when it comes to practice, we are ill-equipped," says Naganathan. Seahorses are not the only marine creatures to be targeted. Last year, sea cucumbers were seized from a container at the Thoothukudi port. Two cases of poaching the seacow were reported in the Gulf of Mannar in 2002-3.

Despite such incidents, the Union Ministry for Forests and Environment, which turned the Gulf of Mannar into a Marine National Park in 1986, has done little to strengthen the surveillance and enforcement network in the area. A 21-member Wild Life Protection Committee under the chairmanship of the district collector was proposed some time back but it still remains on paper.

The lack of joint effort between the police and the Wildlife Department is another thorny issue. And the buck doesn't stop anywhere. Ask Ramanathapuram District Collector K. Sellamuthu about the poaching incidents and the reply is laced with bureaucratese: "There is a separate department for wildlife protection." On his part, Naganathan says the Coast Guard, which is better equipped, is not showing much interest in protecting the marine wildlife.

If the July 22 seizure has achieved anything, it was to expose the faulty procedures at the Chennai port. The customs officials at an inland container depot in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, had cleared the container. The container with chillies was sealed at the Guntur chilliyard. Says M. Subramanyam, joint director, Revenue Intelligence: "The chillies masked the odour of the dried seahorses." Curiously, the customs seal on the container was intact. Explains Subramanyam: "The smugglers must have removed the chillies without tampering with the seal." Intelligence officials believe that once the clearance was obtained at Guntur, the chillies were replaced with seahorses.

At Keelaikarai, trading in seahorses is rampant

The investigation is yet to achieve any breakthrough. "We are convinced that the dried seahorses came from Ramanathapuram and surrounding areas, but we are yet to ascertain how and where they were stuffed into the container," says a senior intelligence officer. The Chennai-based firm which was exporting the "red chillies" is expectedly non-existent. The number plate of the trailer, which transported the container from the Guntur depot to the Chennai port, too is false. DRI officials suspect that the smugglers must have borrowed an import-export (IE) code, which is issued by the Foreign Trade Directorate in the Union Commerce Ministry, from an exporter. The modus operandi is to smuggle the contraband under the pretext of exporting agricultural produce, which doesn't come under a lot of scrutiny. Sources confide that IE codes are readily available through brokers "who take care of everything" for a fee of Rs 20,000.

Such apathy doesn't augur well for the seahorse, said to be a creation of Roman God Neptune and much venerated in Greek fables as the vehicle of Poseidon, the God of water. Scientists have been closely studying this peculiar bony fish whose 19 species (of a total of 35) have been listed as endangered. "All the five species found in the Indian waters fall under the endangered species list," says V.K. Venkataramani, a professor at the Fisheries College and Research Institute, Thoothukudi. Strictly monogamous, the extreme selectivity of seahorses in choosing their mates and the low fecundity are the major reasons for their dwindling population.

The high incidence of poaching of seahorses in the Gulf of Mannar has only made matters worse. Apart from their famed aphrodisiacal qualities, seahorses are an active ingredient in the Chinese system of medicine. Hence the demand for these creatures in south-east Asian countries has never diminished.

While there are no estimates on the ratio of seizures to the actual incidence of smuggling, it is but anybody's guess how much of illegal trade has been happening through the Chennai port. The July 22 haul should be an eye-opener to the illegal trade of endangered marine life, which could well replace narcotics smuggling as the notorious hallmark of Ramanathapuram. Unless there is a sea change in the country's conservation efforts, we may have to rely on ancient Greek art to see how this marine animal looked like.