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Between June and December 2017 alone, eight fishermen operating out of Isla San Esteban, Mexico, illegally caught and killed as many as 14 great white sharks. Plying the waters of the Gulf of California in small boats known as
pangas, they hunted down the enormous fish, hauled them to remote beaches, and dismembered them. To conceal their activity, they mixed the flesh in with their legal catch. From each shark the fishermen kept a tooth. From one, they extracted a full set of jaws.
Marine biologist Daniel J. Madigan, now with the University of Windsor in Ontario, was setting up a research project in the area at the time. While interviewing fishermen about their practices and the species they encountered, he heard rumors of shark poaching.