I was part of a biology expedition going through Baja, Mexico & we stopped at a roadside taco place. Chatting the friendly young waiter, we casually asked the same thing after we started eating.
"Mmm, totoaba," he said smiling.

*Record scratch*
Everyone froze. https://twitter.com/TrevorABranch/status/1289633788595597313

"Uh, you mean the critically endangered fish?"
(Like why did he even tell us? Did he not expect us to know or care?)

What followed was a very eye-opening, somewhat angry conversation.
I learned that because the totuava is vaguely similar to fish species already eradicated...

from the (fucking stupid) demand for its use in Chinese "medicine," poachers now had set their sights on Baja.

For poor fishermen, $18K for the swim bladder of ONE fish... There's no question.

And swim bladders removed, they had no essentially no use for the fish flesh.

Hence the taco shop.

The family running the restaurant could get the de-organed fish for almost free; only the swim bladders had real value.

Was eating the leftover fish bad when this consumption was downstream of the demand? Was the shop wrong for collecting the "bycatch"?

The tacos we held had become part of an unexpectedly nuanced, globally entangled conservation issue.

I still don't know if the family running the stand was bad or good, immoral, culpable, or thrifty.

But man, fuck that bullshit "medicine" hype. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/manta-rays-endangered-by-sudden-demand-from-chinese-medicine/