"The Outlaw Ocean" Set To Deal Another Blow To The Fishing Industry

     24,000 fisheries workers die every year on the job, making it among the most dangerous industries in the world. Hundreds of fisheries observers, mostly in developing nations, have gone overboard, and not by accident. Try telling the truth on whether or not fishermen are breaking the law when you are alone and outnumbered in hostile waters. Fishing vessels carry illegal weapons, transport illegal immigrants (being responsible for a large percentage of those who enter the United States, for instance), and mule illegal drugs about Latin America and Southeast Asia. These are the beginning of a long list of atrocities; it's not just the fishermen in Thailand that are subjected to a form of modern slavery nearly as large as that of sex trafficking; Asian vessels that operate in Hawaii dock in Honolulu and make sure their fishermen never leave the ship to describe the horrors they have endured. All of this is overseen by European and Asian captains and officers who make decent pay and agents and owners who are filthy rich while crew, mostly from impoverished nations, are paid almost nothing, if at all. These criminal syndicates are connected to cartels and international white collar criminals alike, and their activity is wiping out all oceanic life in the process.

     This sounds like something from a Dystopia, but it is reality. Why has nobody written about this? Or made a movie? Ian Urbina of The Atlantic and The New York Times has done just that and prepared, without question, the most comprehensive overview of maritime crime in history. Based on a 2016 series of reports he released (and won or was nominated for a dozen awards for), Urbina released the book The Outlaw Ocean in 2019 to critical acclaim, and the book made it onto the NYT and Amazon Best Sellers Lists . It was accompanied with a musical contribution called The Outlaw Ocean Music Project with samples from artists as well as the foundation of an organization called The Outlaw Ocean Project dedicated entirely to publicizing maritime crime. His work was mentioned by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry when Kerry gave Thailand a failing grade on human trafficking laws. This would be an outstanding achievement in itself, but there is more: Leonardo DiCaprio, a patron of countless animal rights and environmental films, is working on a film that follows the events Urbina experienced. While these are wide-ranging, from a group called Women on Waves that performs free abortions in international waters to an unrecognized micronation that calls itself Sealand, the crux is environmental protection.

     It features Sea Shepherd crew in their pursuit of the vessel Thunder, a notorious Antarctic poaching ship that sinks itself to try to avoid arrest. It features Greenpeace activists trying to stop oil drilling in the Amazon Reef. It features law enforcement boarding IUU fishing vessels in Palau. It features slavery and murder investigations aboard longliners in the Indian Ocean. It also features pirates off of Somalia, who, it should be noted, were pushed into the criminal world by the plundering of their natural resources by Asian and European fishing vessels (the same is now beginning to occur in the Gulf of Guinea; piracy is a story for another time). 

     The fact that the fishing industry is such an insidious threat is what sometimes causes me to lose hope. However, it also gives me some degree of hope: if people don't care about animals rights, maybe the environment, or maybe human trafficking, or maybe the illegal narcotics and human smuggling involved. If you can appeal to one of these issues, it can make a person question their dietary choices, and, ultimately, lead to change. The fishing industry is still reeling from Seaspiracy; The Outlaw Ocean is more unwelcome news as its image as a criminal enterprise long departed from traditional Yankee fishermen of the past becomes ingrained, cemented in the public mind.