Villagers in Awoye in the Niger Delta say the ongoing pollution is causing sickness and environmental destruction, while pleas for help go unanswered

Perched on a narrow hospital cot across from her son, Bodunwa Orugbemi can hear the distant Atlantic Ocean and smell the stench of crude oil on the air drifting in from the shore. For days, her 21-year-old son has been lying in this hospital in the Niger Delta, swallowing small spoonfuls of food without being able to speak.

Seventy‑year‑old Orugbemi says Ijadopin started coughing one evening in May, inside their small wooden home in Awoye on Nigeria’s Atlantic coastline. After a few days his cough intensified, then he developed a skin irritation, followed by difficulty breathing.

For migrant workers trapped onboard Chinese distant water fishing fleets, cutting the fins off sharks as they writhe violently on rusted decks in the Indian Ocean isn’t accidental. It’s an intentional and lucrative act that marks the start of a bloody half-a-billion-dollar offshore supply chain, tacitly supported by Beijing yet covertly concealed from port inspectors globally.

The Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit focused on the protection of endangered species, filed a formal petition this month requesting the U.S. government potentially sanction China for failing to meet American shark conservation standards. Shark populations have declined by more than 70 percent since 1970, with more than one-third of all shark and ray species now threatened with extinction. Yet each year, Chinese-flagged vessels catch, brutally fin, and discard thousands.

Should the National Marine Fisheries Service identify China as having violated the US Moratorium Protection Act, then President Trump could be expected to ban the import of all $1.5 billion of Chinese seafood.

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