The complexity of trade networks is a major challenge to controlling wildlife trafficking and
illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. These networks may not be modern
inventions, but have developed over centuries, from integrated global markets that preceded
modern regulatory policies. To understand these linkages, we curated 150 years of
tortoiseshell transactions and derived biologically informed harvest models to estimate the
trade in critically endangered hawksbill sea turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata). We find that …