New book dives into the underworld of giant-clam poaching

Adapted from "Shell Games: Rogues, Smugglers, and the Hunt for Nature's Bounty" by Craig Welch (William Morrow, $25.99). Release date: April 6.

FROM A DISTANCE, the boat didn't look like much. Aluminum with blue trim. A row of smudged cabin windows. A thick center mast crowded with antennas and loudspeakers. Through moonlight and a light rain, Detective Ed Volz could see a curtain of black rubber cloaking half of the vessel like a tent. He couldn't spot the orange glow of a single cigarette and suspected the captain had ordered his crew not to smoke.

Volz and a partner, Bill Jarmon, were crouched behind Douglas firs and madronas on a wooded bluff overlooking Puget Sound. They peered down a sandy cliff, Volz through a spotting scope, Jarmon through binoculars, at the boat idling below. Volz heard little other than the wind and the waves. He knew a pair of aging mattresses stuffed in old sleeping bags had been wrapped around an air compressor, muffling its groan. No one who passed by would suspect it fed oxygen through a hose to a thief below.

Volz had never been diving. But he knew what could be found in the region's murky underwater world. In the sound's web of tideflats, channels, marshes, bays and deltas, life took beguiling forms — particularly in the dimmest depths. Shovel-nosed ratfish patrolled the cobble flats alongside wolf eels with pinched faces that looked chiseled from granite. Anemones glowed in waggling fingers of lavender or in perfect white cauliflower stalks. Ochre sea stars the size of cow heads curled around rocks and mussels, gauging light through the red dots on each arm. Bubble gum-pink corals camouflaged the porcupine shields of sea urchins.

Rockfish, perch, lingcod, squid. At one time or another, the detectives had found all of these and more in places they did not belong — in nets tied under docks to be retrieved after dark, in aquariums or coolers hidden under tarps in old pickups, on ice in the holding tanks of pirate fishing boats. Thieves hooked, netted, dug and snatched these creatures and then sold them for food, pets, trophies, even medicine. Some took a few plants and animals. Others hijacked sea life by the truckload. Volz couldn't recall all the ways he'd seen people steal.

Volz made his living policing the theft of wild things. In 25 years with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, he'd chased elk-antler thieves and smugglers exporting bobcat and lynx to collectors. He'd caught poachers who'd hacked off eagle talons for artifact hunters. He carried handcuffs and operated with all the police powers of other lawmen. Here on the western slope of the Cascade Mountains, he and his fellow detectives specialized in undercover investigations, mostly involving the region's billion-dollar fishing industry. They'd tracked permits and bank records and trapped Dungeness crab thieves and snared abalone poachers who pried the fist-size mollusks from rocky crevices. They'd never pursued anyone quite like this captain.

VOLZ SPRAWLED on a spongy bed of leaves on the bluff and watched fog roll in through the rain and across the black water and the boat below. Tonight, he and Jarmon were joined by a third detective, Charlie Pudwill, who'd made his way to the water's edge below. Volz was grateful for the help. It was after midnight, and the detectives had tailed the suspect for hours, racing across bridges by land as the boat stole south through Puget Sound.

Volz adjusted and readjusted his scope. Eventually he saw what could have been a harbor seal bobbing above the water's surface. Then a black-gloved hand emerged, and someone paddled toward the boat. The diver climbed aboard the vessel empty-handed.

Volz was not expecting this. He'd expected the diver would stay under for hours. Then the crew would haul up a net carrying a load of seafood large enough to stuff a Volkswagen. Instead, the black shadow peeled off his dry suit, and the boat rumbled to life. Hugging the shoreline, it jetted toward Devil's Head point, the last hook on the peninsula before the shoreline looped west and back north.

Volz and Jarmon ran toward the road, clambered into Jarmon's Ford Expedition and shot south. The boat was already out of sight. They drove through the night high above the beach, the truck's headlights off, unable to spy the boat or raise Pudwill on the radio.

The detectives had lost the captain several times before; he used top-of-the-line radar and night-vision gear and moved unpredictably, as if he knew he was being watched. They'd finally caught a break two months earlier. An informant had described crew members on the boat forging documents and illegally hauling in millions of dollars worth of shellfish. Volz was watching one of the country's most profitable wildlife-smuggling rings — certainly the strangest and most sophisticated the Pacific Northwest had seen in decades.

But the detectives had to catch the thieves in the act. Four times in two weeks, they'd tried tailing the boat from land. Each time, they'd followed until 4 a.m. And each time the boat returned to the Fox Island marina empty. No one unloaded what they'd heard the crew was hunting: the world's largest burrowing clam, known as a geoduck (pronounced "gooey duck"), an obscene-looking giant mollusk that embodied a sea change in wildlife smuggling, a creature with which Volz shared a long and complicated history.

Puget Sound's geoducks had burrowed their way into Northwest mythology. Now, thanks to savvy marketing and a lust abroad for obscure delicacies, they also had aroused the palates of Asian eaters. Every day, couriers boxed geoducks with gel packs and placed them on jets. Within 72 hours they bobbed in restaurant tanks in Beijing or Shanghai or lay in tubs of shaved ice in Tokyo. Everywhere the giant clams went they fetched fistfuls of dollars.

These bivalves were so valuable they'd been traded for narcotics, and that worth helped create a perfect recipe for crime. With geoduck gathering done underwater and out of sight, corrupt fishermen could take thousands more than the law allowed. Volz had watched geoducks over the years become the region's most lucrative prize. And now these giant clams drew poachers and smugglers and arsonists and hit men, and one audacious thief trailed by a crew of exhausted cops.

ELEPHANT TUSKS, wild furs, alligator skins and exotic birds. That's what wildlife thieves used to smuggle. But by the 20th century's close a new reality had emerged: Almost anything in nature can be contraband. Fish eggs. Baboon noses. Decorative plants known as cycads, which have been around since the Jurassic period. Venus flytraps snatched illegally from backwoods bogs in the Carolinas land in stalls at Dutch floral markets. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegally caught finger-size glass eels work their way from New England to Japan. Crooks ship stolen monkey blood through Memphis, Tenn., and banned seal oil through Louisville, Ky. Illicit fish, plants and animals of all varieties crisscross the globe to feed black markets.

The transformation came in the last third of the 20th century, when seismic shifts in the world economy fundamentally altered the nature of global commerce. People used to buy from local retailers, who bought from wholesalers, who brought goods in from other states or overseas. Then Asian economies ballooned, the Soviet Empire collapsed and trade barriers fell one after the other. Western-style capitalism washed across continents. Shipping and jet cargo service became routine, along with private package delivery from FedEx and UPS. Technology transformed how everything was bought and sold, increasing the odds that someone bent on selling something could stumble across a buyer somewhere who wanted it. The Internet only stirred things up more, letting buyers purchase direct from Thailand on eBay.

These changes opened avenues for crooks. Suddenly almost anything from anywhere was being sold outside the law and in bulk: pirated Nintendo game cartridges, fake designer handbags, stolen AK-47s, and plants or animals. By the 1990s, illegal trade accounted for 10 percent of the world economy. The value of black markets as a percentage of the U.S. gross domestic product tripled from 1960 to the mid-1990s. Wildlife trafficking blossomed with it, becoming one of the world's largest illicit trades.

Now, every day at U.S. airports and border crossings, wildlife inspectors and customs agents witness inspired displays of duplicity. Bird smugglers stuff stolen live finches in curling irons or squeeze them into socks packed in badminton birdie tubes. Thieves hide tiny golden-throated tropical birds called Cuban grassquits in their underpants or cram banded iguanas from Fiji Island into hollowed-out prosthetic legs. Women smuggle monkeys in their hair. Men hide primates in their pants.

This trade seamlessly intertwines with conventional markets. Boutique fashion outlets from New York to Oregon peddle illegal blue coral jewelry, belts made from alligators killed by poachers, or watch straps carved from the skin of Argentine lizards. Vials of aphrodisiacs, ground from deer and tiger penises and smuggled into the country by airline flight attendants, sell in herbal markets. From the tuna in a favorite sushi joint to gobies in a friend's fish tank, stolen creatures, or goods made from them, sell regularly in shopping malls, pet stores, flower shops, restaurants and supermarkets.

The bulk of this trade still comes in from abroad, but thieving isn't limited to third-world countries. Creatures by the tens of thousands are now lifted from the forests, deserts and waterways around America, often not far from major cities like Seattle.

Sometimes the criminals are just small-time hoods. But this trade also draws a craftier breed of thief, one literate enough to comprehend obscure laws and wily enough to find creative ways around them. They steal rare Grand Canyon butterflies by the hundreds or take tiny baby leopard sharks from San Francisco Bay by the thousands, all with an eye toward international markets. These poachers and smugglers piggyback on legitimate markets. They doctor paperwork and shovel loot into shipping containers. They pack stolen goods on jets or drop them with courier services. They trade this contraband like lawful commodities.

And the state and federal investigators who police these traffickers troll rivers, tromp beaches and hike deserts, forests and parks. They struggle to halt the siphoning of the country's strangest life-forms: Pennsylvania turtles, wild ginseng from Appalachia, black-bear innards from Virginia, the slimy eggs of ancient fish from the Columbia River, or the strange-looking shellfish residing beneath the ocean waves.

The geoduck's popularity tracked the rise of this new underground, demonstrating an evolution in our ability to exploit nature. In the booming international market for fresh seafood, the geoduck had become a path to quick profits.

And smart smugglers always follow the money.

VOLZ AND Jarmon drove on through the dark. They pulled over after a few miles, unsure where the boat had gone. They jogged through a clearing to another embankment and peered across the water. They thought they heard the boat, but saw nothing. Down the road, the detectives noticed a dirt trail that led through the woods. They hopped from the truck and slid on foot down a slick, winding slope to the water's edge.

Rising tide chewed at the beach, but if they worked their way to the peninsula's tip, Volz figured, they would eventually spy the boat. Soon the beach was actually gone. The detectives splashed through briny water and foam, which topped their ankles and squished in their shoes. The tide was still rising, and the water this time of year was usually well below 50 degrees.

A mile short of the point, the men saw a sand-and-clay cliff. Centuries of tidal pounding had eaten away at this wall, undercutting it. Dark water crashed against it at the base. Continuing on would be dangerous. The men no longer even heard the boat. Volz tried raising Pudwill on the radio but got static.

The detectives had to make a decision. For much of a decade, Volz had seen his share of mischief. He'd chased lowlifes and hustlers and wannabe gangsters. He'd flown to Las Vegas to hunt a clam rustler who tried hiring a hit man to knock off a rival. Each of those clowns chased Puget Sound's inelegant shellfish. And here was the captain he wanted to catch the most, but Volz's watch read 2 a.m., and he and his partner had worked since dawn. Volz needed to get close enough to see the man's face, but the way ran beneath this unstable bank.

The men, cold and filthy, stopped. Volz didn't want anyone getting hurt. The detectives turned and sprinted back toward their truck, clawing through thick brush and stumbling over snags. Blackberry brambles bloodied their arms and faces. Caked in mud, they climbed back into the Expedition.

Volz felt deflated. He brought the radio to his face. Detective Pudwill answered. He hadn't seen anything suspicious in two hours. Volz said he and Jarmon would come join Pudwill for a moment on the beach. Then they'd all give up and head home to bed.

Moments later the boat tore back by heading north, its running lights blazing.

Maybe the captain had gotten careless. Maybe he'd convinced himself he wasn't being followed. The detectives radioed Pudwill one more time. He told them the boat was sputtering into the channel. It cut its engines and its lights and drifted to the far side. The captain looked ready to drop anchor and get to work.

Jarmon put the truck in gear.

But it would be years before this chase would conclude.

Craig Welch is a Seattle Times environmental reporter. Dean Rutz is a Times staff photographer.