The fiscal properties of the sea were originally found in that which was rare, namely, shipwrecked human goods such as silverware or golden doubloons, but Triton’s meteoric rise to power from his famous campaign that branded humans as “tailless, scaleless, and soulless” and subsequent quashing of human-made goods as currency created a black market that traded in such objects. At one point, one thumb-sized piece of sea glass went for twelve conch shells, the currency of choice of the tyrannical Triton, a choice mightily protested by the crustacean delegation. At that time, the demand for illicit human goods rivaled the incidence of the illegal mer-organ harvesting, which largely dealt in tail augmentation and scale-therapy.

Ultimately, Triton’s youngest daughter halted the heyday of the underground human goods trade when she turned human, causing him to realize that a free-market approach concerning found treasures would move the kingdom forward, and that legalization and regulation would enable all parties to get along swimmingly.