[5] New studies have indicated a possible expansion in range for the living totoaba population from their historical southern limit of west Bahía Concepción and east in the mouth of the El Fuerte River, Sinaloa to more southward bound areas such as in the Bay of La Paz and off Mármol.

The totoaba use different habitat areas of the Gulf for their ontogenetic migratory pattern which consist of pre-recruits, juveniles, pre-adults, and adults.

[9] The totoaba have an elongated compressed fusiform body shape with a terminal oblique mouth and lower jaw that projects slightly.

The study found 11 species of prey consumed by the totoaba: Pacific anchovy (Centengraulis mysticetus), flathead grey mullet (Mugil cephalus), bigeye croaker (Micropogonias megalops), northern anchovy (Engraulis mordox), ocean whitefish (Caulolatilus princeps), milkfish (Chanos chanos), and Pacific sardine (Sardinpos sagax).

[2] The totoaba spawn in the mouth of the Colorado River Delta, serving as a nursery of shallow, brackish waters for the young fish.

Larval and juvenile stages occupying the Colorado delta, while the adult breeding population lives for most of the year in deeper water towards the middle of the Gulf of California.

[19][8] This suggest that either the totoaba are resilient and adaptable to changes occurring in their natural habitat or migrating to brackish waters served other purposes outside meeting breeding conditions.

[19] Another threat to the totoaba is from human poaching: the swim bladder, commonly referred to as "maw" is a valuable commodity, as it is considered a delicacy in Chinese cuisine;[20] the meat is also sought-after for making soups.

[24][25] The illegal totoaba fishery also threatens the vaquita, a critically endangered porpoise endemic to the northern Gulf of California that appears to be doomed to extinction unless the setting of gillnets in its habitat can be halted.

Recent research in 2024 has created a way to identify totoaba swim bladders on-site of legal and illegal trades, that is efficient, convenient, inexpensive, and gives reliable results called real-time fluorescence-based recombinase-aid amplification (RF-RAA).

[27] Helping authorities be equipped to handle the increase in illegal imports and the market regulations surrounding totoaba swim bladders.

[28][29] Although now done at a relatively large scale by private fish farms,[30] much of the initial research in the captive keeping, breeding and raising of totoaba was done at the Autonomous University of Baja California.

[31] Formerly abundant and subject to an intensive fishery, the totoaba has become rare, and was listed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora under Appendix I in 1976.

[1] On 16 April 2015, Enrique Peña Nieto, the President of Mexico, announced a program of rescue and conservation of the vaquita and the totoaba, including closures and financial support to fishermen in the area.

[35] Despite being illegal, this trade often happened quite openly and traders reported being warned before checks by Chinese authorities, allowing them to hide the swim bladders.

[24][31] Although this mainly is done to supply the food market,[31] tens of thousands of totoaba hatched in captivity have been released into the wild in an attempt to save the species.