The Outlaw Ocean: The Outlaw Sea – an interview with Ian Urbina

Two-thirds of the world's oceans fall outside the jurisdiction of any country - the high seas. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist and author Ian Urbina has traveled this area of ​​lawlessness and written a book about it: Outlaw Ocean. We interviewed Ian Urbina for you to find out more about his book, ghost nets and lawlessness on the high seas.

Two-thirds of the world's oceans fall outside the jurisdiction of any one country - the high seas. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist and author Ian Urbina has traveled this area of ​​lawlessness. During his five years of research on the high seas, he experienced many dangerous ventures and explored the seas from the Southern Ocean to Somalia.

“Outlaw Ocean” is a collection of stories from his research, personal experience and interviews with people involved. It reveals to the public eye a vacuum of law on the high seas and describes vividly what really happens far from the coast and out of sight of the coast guard. He writes about piracy and smuggling, reports on enslaved crews and murder, documents deliberate oil dumping and illegal fishing.

The book is a real eye-opener, and it almost feels like a small window into a parallel world. While The Outlaw Ocean highlights the horrific human deeds that occur when law and justice are absent, it also discusses the difficulties in addressing these problems.

Since Bracenet is working diligently to rid the seas of ghost nets and these issues are all interconnected, we wanted to learn more. We were lucky enough to interview Ian Urbina to talk more about his book, ghost nets, and his opinion on lawlessness on the high seas. Enjoy the interview!

What was your most formative experience during your research?

It's not easy to choose the most formative and meaningful experience from a book with 15 chapters. I think I'll choose two. First: The case of the "Thunder". The story is about Sea Shepherd. The marine conservationists set out on their own initiative to find and pursue the most wanted and illegal fishing boat in the world. The hunt lasted 110 days and went from Antarctica all the way up to the coast of Africa. The book is also called "The Outlaw Ocean" and not "The Illegal Ocean" because much of what happens out there falls outside the law. This experience was very vivid, memorable and shocking.

Secondly, slavery at sea. Reporting on the problem of captured, trafficked, indebted and sometimes even kidnapped workers who are put on fishing vessels and sometimes held at sea for two or three years. The slavery sometimes goes so far that people are chained up. The extent of slavery at sea and the incredible abuse that takes place in this form all over the world is just horrifying and I was surprised at how intense the problem is.

Would you say that in our continental life we ​​have distorted information about the lawlessness on the high seas or are we simply not getting all the information?

The problem is a lack of information. The fishing industry has little obligation to report its activities. It is not even illegal to turn off transponders and disappear completely from radar. So there is very little tracking once you reach the high seas.

And from a public perspective, there is very little coverage of this area because it is extremely expensive, difficult and time-consuming. 56 million people work on the high seas, but hardly anyone talks about them.

Would you say it's different within the 200 mile zone? Is there more information and more journalism about lawlessness and crime?

Not much more, to be honest. There are some reports about local fishermen, especially in the local press. But very few newspapers, radio stations or TV stations have their own marine reporter. There are of course journalists who visit fishermen occasionally, but they don't stay with them. And this is a tribe where you have to stay for a long time to gain trust and learn what is really going on. We hear a little about plastic pollution, we sometimes hear about ghost nets, we hear about sea level rise, we hear about overfishing - but other stories like deliberate dumping of weapons, human slavery, illegal fishing, illegal whaling and theft of ships are not really heard. You really have to dig deep and work long hours for these stories.

You rarely hear of stories where someone is clearly responsible. Who do you think is in a position to change that? Who is perhaps also responsible for the fact that this is not yet possible?

You're working on ghost nets and doing really important work, and it's important that you have an audience in the public. The offshore area, which covers two-thirds of the planet, is a kind of distant frontier that's hard to access. It's all pretty opaque. It's not just about the obscure bad guys. It's also about big players who know that if they cut their nets, they'll get away with it. Nobody notices - until much later, when, for example, ghost divers or researchers find the nets.

Who is capable of changing something? Well, everyone!

Consumers who buy seafood need to engage with these issues and start asking questions of the people who sell them the fish. And sellers need to ask questions too. How can they ensure that all their goods were caught appropriately? What exactly does their supply chain look like? Governments also need to act by passing laws, releasing money for enforcement, and conducting inspections to find out whose nets have gone missing and hold actors accountable. That just takes money and political will. Taxpayers, legislators, lawyers, NGOs, bloggers and companies like you and journalists like me need to keep applying pressure.

In your book you describe that there are no control mechanisms on the high seas. Would you say that having control mechanisms would improve the situation?

I am skeptical that governments can solve the problem alone, let alone be on the front lines. We are talking about international waters that belong to no one and no one. Which government, which group of governments, has the authority to do that? I think they will play a role, but probably only by passing laws that put pressure on companies. These laws will demand more responsibility from companies in the supply chain. I don't imagine it being like a high seas police force. Rather, every country will pass laws that prohibit companies from selling their products if they don't meet certain standards. It should no longer be permitted to accept fish if there is no clear documentation of the supply chain.

For example: A ship sails from Tokyo to LA and has registered seven miles of nets. If it arrives in LA with a whole bunch of fish and only has four miles of net left, where are the other nets? From a regulatory point of view, this is not rocket science. There just has to be a political will to impose really strict conditions on those who want to fish.

The stories you describe are mostly set in Asia or around Africa, but you also describe some cases around Europe. Would you say there is a significant difference to the crimes you have encountered in European waters?

Yes and no. I haven't spent enough time in European waters to be able to give an informed answer. In general, I think poorer countries have the worst abuses in their waters - not because the people are different in character, but because they are more desperate. Overfishing, illegal fishing, deliberate dumping of oil and discarding of nets are crimes that I can imagine in European waters. But murder, human slavery, arms trafficking... I do think that these kinds of crimes occur in European waters. But not as often as in the places I focus on: Latin America, Africa, Asia.

What are you curious about at the moment, what are you waiting for, maybe a new convention or a new law? Is there anything in the pipeline that you expect in the near future?

There's an exciting thing going on at the United Nations, it's often called the "High Seas Diversity Treaty." It's a long process that's been going on for almost a decade now, where different representatives of different countries and industries have been trying to figure out how to better manage international waters and how to deal with certain questions that have never been answered before. For example: if certain actors want to set up a marine protected area (MPA) to counter climate change and slow down the exploitation of the oceans, who can do that? Who gives permission to set up such an MPA? Who enforces it, what are the penalties if someone violates it? Because it's a public space, right? MPAs are one of the most promising topics in marine conservation right now. But the Diversity Treaty also deals with other things: Who should decide how much fish can be caught on the high seas, how many fishing vessels should be there?

Have you personally seen ghost nets on fishing boats or people cutting the nets?

The only encounter I had with ghost nets in the story was at the beginning of the book about the pursuit of the Thunder. But these were not ghost nets in the true sense. These were nets used for illegal fishing that were confiscated by Sea Shepherd. They cut the nets off the illegal vessel Thunder and took them on board as evidence of the crimes. This caused a lot of conflict and the Thunder became very aggressive and angry about having their nets confiscated and, from their perspective, stolen.

Can you explain the connection between illegal fishing and ghost nets in more detail?

If you operate a legal fishing vessel, you probably have to keep track of equipment. You actually have to keep clean books. But if you captain an illegal vessel, you can use captured labor because no one is checking, and a crew can disappear halfway through a voyage because no one is going to ask why two people are missing. And if it's cheaper to cut a net than spend all day collecting, you can do that too. Time and space are crucial. If a net is in a situation that could hold up a vessel for a period of time, time equals fuel. And what people on land don't realize is that the window of time in which you can drop the catch is often very limited.

One thing that people should really think about is that the range of abuses and crimes at sea is greater than most people realise. The problems out there are acute and diverse. They are interconnected because they typically coexist and are interdependent. Illegal fishing is linked to slavery at sea, and slavery at sea is linked to ghost nets.

Do you think that companies like ours, which address issues such as plastic pollution, radical fishing or plastic waste in general, can solve these problems?

Yes - I would just say that I don't believe in "solving" or "fixing" or "getting there." The best we should hope for is that we're constantly moving toward the goal, but not necessarily getting there. Because I don't think you can ever really solve these things. The only way we get extremely close to the goal is if we try to find lots of different answers.

So we have startups, a lot of organizations like you that are changing part of the equation at the grassroots, organic, local level. At the same time, there are other stakeholders that are driving these issues in their own ways: lawyers and unions that are not only representing fishing workers for human rights, but also protecting them when they report, for example, a ghost net on the vessel they were working on. Everyone has a role to play, as a donor, as a parent, as a spouse, as a taxpayer, as a professional, as an artist. I think all of these actors are needed. But especially companies like you that are trying to change the use of the products (the ghost nets). That's great.

Do you still eat fish? We can imagine that you didn't really have a choice during your research in the offshore sector.

I stopped eating meat and seafood many years ago, mainly as an experiment to see if I could do it. I was an athlete and I was also concerned about land and water use and the politics around meat and seafood. That was two decades ago. So now I don't eat seafood or meat. But when I'm a guest at someone's house or, more importantly, on a ship reporting, I always eat whatever is put in front of me, no matter what it is, and I enjoy it very much.

After all the things you have seen, do you still travel the oceans for a private vacation?

Without a doubt. I have become even more in love with this space and more dependent on its beauty, its power and its mystery than before. I didn't grow up sailing. I've never been on a cruise ship. In that sense, I don't really go on vacation at sea. But when I go on vacation, I want to be by the sea. I love the sea, and I love island cultures in particular. Whenever I'm on a reporting trip and I'm at sea on these ships, I feel a certain, almost existential connection with the sea, out there, so far from the coast. Over the last seven or eight years, I've become addicted to the kind of calm that comes when you leave the mainland for a long time. It's like space travel in a strange way.

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Many of the Bracenet team have already read “The Outlaw Ocean” or are currently doing so. We think it is a must-read for anyone who cares about our oceans. Find out more about the The Outlaw Ocean Project.