12 nautical miles from shore where laws apply no more.

(Urbina, 2015)

Welcome back to all things involving the fishing industry and the many atrocities in the vast ocean. Imagine being out in the open water, where no laws apply, anything can happen, and no one is watching. Once leaving a country's shoreline on about 12 nautical miles out into the sea, one has entered international waters where it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to define what laws apply. The misery that is endured by fishermen is hard to fathom. With vessels out hundreds of miles from a shoreline, they are unregulated and out of sight. Due to the lack of visibility migrant workers are held captive, typically from developing countries, who have no idea how to get back to their families. Lax maritime labor laws and an incredible global demand for seafood have made a ripe environment for human rights abuse and illegal fishing tactics. 

(Urbina, 2015)

So how do these fishing vessels get away with it? Long-haul fishing, where fishing vessels stay out hundreds of miles from a shoreline for sometimes years, with rising fuel costs and fish being overfished near shorelines, vessels are forced to go further and further out, which means less and less regulation (Urbina, 2015). These fishing vessels are far from civilization and have lured migrant workers under false pretenses, ultimately becoming sea slaves in floating labor camps. Life on the sea is relatively cheap with extremely harsh conditions (Urbina, 2015). Men are beaten for little to no reason. Oftentimes workers do not speak the same language as the captain of the fishing vessel, so the language barrier makes it very complicated to understand a commands. There is a link between those living conditions, working conditions, and safety conditions and incidents of IUU fishing, which happens out in the open international sea. The  on fishing vessels are horrendous of sight, or in remote and dangerous locations which prevent captured sea slaves to be afforded protections and rescue. These migrant workers who are working mainly for Thai fishing vessels are from Cambodia or Myanmar. Forced to work long hours with little rest. The drift net used to catch the netting used to catch them, which is very hard work. These nets are prone to ripping, hands are never fully dry, have open wounds, are slit from fish scales, and are torn from net friction (Urbina, 2015). The correlation between working conditions and illegal fishing tactics such as the use of drift net 

 Next blog post, I will be elaborating on what can be done to help people who have been captured and brought out to sea under false pretenses. Works like the Sea Shepard- which is an international nonprofit self-proclaimed vigilante marine conservation that engages in direct action. 

In the meantime, please watch this video with a survivor who was in sea slavery, stuck at sea, and on his journey to land. 

Shannon Service, Basil Childers, Greg Kwedar, Ben Laffin and Alexandra Garcia•July 27, 2015. 

In 2011, Asorasak Thamma was kidnapped in Thailand and enslaved on a fishing boat. Interviewed last year, but he has not been home since.

Works Cited: 

Urbina, Ian. 2015. 'Sea Slaves': The human misery that feeds pets and livestock. New York Times. July 27, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/world/outlaw-ocean-thailand-fishing-sea-slaves-pets.html