The author of the story, Ian Urbina, has just published an eminently readable book (Outlaw Ocean, from which this story is an edited excerpt) on the vagaries of law on the high seas; embedding with fishermen, repossessors, fishery authorities and environmentalists he paints a rather grim picture of how you can get away with just about any kind of ruthlessness, cruelty or pollution as long as you do so in international waters.
I picked it up at JFK the day before yesterday, planning on reading a chapter before going to sleep on my flight to Heathrow. Next thing I knew, the flight attendant asked me to prepare for landing.
One of the stories I recall from my time at an NGO in this space is that a tuna boat crew straight up murdered their fisheries observer and chucked his body overboard. When the ship docked, the responsible crew scattered to the wind.
There’s a huge tension in the observer’s position. They’re watching what you’re doing and can see any legal violations. At the same time, they’re dependent on the fishing vessel for food and shelter. High bandwidth communication channels are expensive and hard to come by. And if the captain/crew knows you’re putting their livelihoods at risk in real-time, they might do something about it. So we had to balance observer safety with whatever data we were asking them to collect.
This is true for any situation when you’re the lone outgroup. Unless you have a camera live streaming (which is expensive even in an urban area), you only have the available evidence, which could be scarce or ambiguous.
The only deterrent is the chance someone might avenge you, which usually ends up being a prosecutor interested in only padding their win rate.
People who survive poverty are more aware of this than others.
Up here in Norway they had discovered some absolutely horrid working conditions on some of the trawlers that fish for snow and king crabs. They'd import workers from eastern Europe and Asia (Indonesians etc.) - where the workers would deal with up to 18-hours shifts, to the point that they'd fall asleep on deck, while working.
When food ran out, they'd start eating bait. The pay was so low that they sometimes couldn't afford going back home...$400-$500 monthly salary in northern Europe.
Why eat the bait instead of the catch? Surely on a ship full of literal tons of fish, the cost of feeding the crew some of it is completely negligible?
Reminds me of an article discussed here, which I can’t find at the moment, about the horrific conditions that cruise ship employees, often indentured servants, endure.
When I was a kid, working on the open seas seemed so romantic, but I suppose historically it’s mostly been a cruel environment populated with cruel people.
I think NY Times had a similar story about fishing fleets in Thailand and Indonesia... basically modern slavery. Seized passports. Multi-year contracts. Brutal work hours, abuse, and horrendous living conditions.
Sounds like NZ acted aggressively in trying to do the right thing here, which is terrific to hear.
>The last men off the drowning ship said that they saw Shin in the wheelhouse, refusing to abandon his post or put on a life jacket. Hugging a pole and clutching his clear bottle, he was muttering in Korean and crying.
I find this fascinating. You really couldn’t ask for something that would align incentives more in keeping the ship afloat than the captain going down with the ship. And yet, the captain blatantly ignored safety requirements and caused his ship to sink.
I have more respect for this captain, who even though he placed his crew members lives at risk, placed himself at more risk and went down with the ship, than a lot of CEOs who do or tacitly encourage doing very shady (or illegal) things and then escape accountability through golden parachutes. Maybe we need more “captains going down with the ship” type of laws in the business sector.
As a former professional deckhand who has worked on small fishing craft, my take on this would not be that he elected to go down with his ship. If that has ever actually happened outside of myth and fable then it has at least been very rare. My guess is that in his own way the captain was as desperate for the job and as fearful for the consequences of the unfolding event as his crew, and was simply paralyzed by despair. He may also have been impaired by alcohol, dampening reason and enhancing panic. Many, perhaps most, commercial sailors fear the water in a way that people who work ashore can't understand. The image of the recreational sailor who is as at home in the water as on the surface of it does not describe the average worker on a commercial vessel, right up to the officers. They're not out there for fun, and they know that if they are forced overboard far from land, survival suit or no, the chances of death are quite high.
That thought has always terrified me: survival mode in/on the water with an inevitable death ahead.
It masks me wonder if there is a market for automatic sensing hydro-electronic sensors integrated in sailors / fishermen's clothing. The idea is if the sensor is in contact with some amount of water for 90+ seconds, start a count-down to chirp an emergency radio beacon.If the user doesn't over-ride the count-down, via a button somewhere in clothing, it starts sending a distress beacon, allowing for rescue within hours most likely.
The reason for the automatic element is if someone were to be knocked overboard and unconscious. A similar concept can be thought of regarding the firefighters PASS device:
You basically reinvented the PLB (Personal Location Beacon), a GPS-equipped radio transmitter slightly bigger than a pack of cigarettes which will let a satellite network know your precise location minutes after falling in the water.
The one I wear when at sea cost $400 or so plus a $50 annual fee.
Not necessarily; after all, such a beacon will only let the world know that someone, somewhere is in the water; depending on where they fell in, rescue personnel may need days to get to the site if it is sufficiently remote and the weather is bad enough.
The main benefit of a PLB is to assist the vessel you fell from in finding you - unless you had the good luck to fall overboard near a heliport in decent weather or in a busy shipping lane, the PLB will (mostly) not be able to get a rescue effort by any other party under way in time.
> Thank you. So it is a case of people planning poorly. :(
Well most of them were picked up by another fishing vessel, probably because of a VHF radio distress call and not a ELB/PLB. Those devices often depend on reception by overflying commercial aircraft, which are bound by international treaty to monitor the frequencies and forward reports to land-based authorities. Others use satellite reception. Such beacons are the method of last resort when far from land and not in the company of other nearby vessels, and it can take quite awhile for responders to get the report and make it out to the area.
My suspicion is that the majority of the people who could benefit from this are considered expendable by their employers, and most of the rest couldn't afford it anyway.
Very cool idea, but I doubt there's money to be made, except perhaps by targeting recreational water-goers.
I think going down with the ship may have less to do with honor in this case, but with the realization that he made such a serious mistake that his career (and likely freedom) was over and suicide became an attractive option.
He killed five of his men, and sank the ship because he wanted to save then net and catch. I suspect whichever authorities had jurisdiction over him would frown upon that.
Haha! Jokes on you man. Suicide just means we have one less hand to help wash the shitted bedsheets. Live people are much more likely to help you get what you want.
The number of hands available is rarely the problem with the bedsheets. "I screwed it up therefore I'm more qualified to tell the peons how to fix it!" is a particularly impoverished variant of argument from authority. The bedsheet-shitter is welcome to give his life whatever meaning he can through whatever means don't involve his continued access to our bedsheets.
It is not surprising that these kinds of conditions exist on fishing vessels - you start to treat your fellow human animals the same way you treat other animals. "Fishing," which is really planetary-scale sea foraging, as Jeremy Jackson points out, is incredibly cruel to everyone involved. If you do not already shun seafood because of the massive amounts of mercury and other toxin pollution, maybe consider the ethical problems, and start advocating for a total ban on commercial fishing.
I'm from a very rural (coastal) area, where every surrounding town and village has been affected by loss of jobs, displacement of fishing industries, etc.
Fishing is, and has been for hundreds of years, the lifeblood of the area.
One thing I've noticed is that people are unfortunately vehemently anti-regulations and anti-gov involvement. Any new company, no mater how shady, is welcomed with open arms. As long as they bring jobs, all is good.
As it often happens, these companies skirt (or just completely ignore) labor laws, and will work their employees to the bone, ignoring contracts, and what not.
Not too long ago a company like that was taken down by workers that actually sued, because it turned out that they'd been working double digit hours, 7 days a week, without pay, and in dangerous conditions.
The company simply shut down, knowing they wouldn't stand a chance to compensate workers on owed salaries.
The locals were furious. Not at the company, but at the workers that sued - because one less business meant less jobs. They'd rather have workers get abused and cheated out of money, than no money.
And that is unfortunately the attitude in many such places - not only slave workers from south-east Asia.
Desperation really plays a trick on people, and can make them susceptible to exploitation.
I usually try to stay away from comments on the site implementation, but in this case having the same full page video ad pop up every time you scroll a page on mobile? Seriously, what are they thinking? I understand the importance of ads to a site, but this made the article unreadable to me.
I picked it up at JFK the day before yesterday, planning on reading a chapter before going to sleep on my flight to Heathrow. Next thing I knew, the flight attendant asked me to prepare for landing.