You can’t make this stuff up. Only a week after the last wreckage of the minesweeper USS Guardian was removed from the reef in the Philippines’  Tubbataha National Marine Park, a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site, where it ran hard aground on January 17th, a Chinese fishing vessel, Min Long Yu, ran aground on the same reef.  Not only did the ship have no business being anywhere near the protected reef, but Philippine officials found 22,000 pounds of of pangolin meat, a protected species of scaly anteater, aboard the fishing vessel.

“It is bad enough that the Chinese have illegally entered our seas, navigated without boat papers and crashed recklessly into a national marine park and World Heritage Site,” said Word Wildlife Fund-Philippines chief executive officer Jose Ma. Lorenzo Tan. “It is simply deplorable that they appear to be posing as fishermen to trade in illegal wildlife.” 

Chinese smugglers nabbed carrrying endangered anteaters in Phillipines