How a Tiny Team of Journalists Held the World’s Biggest Fishing Fleet to Account
…This was one of many stark encounters during a four-year investigation I conducted with an international team of reporters at sea and on land that revealed a broad pattern of severe human rights abuses tied to the global seafood industry…
The investigation documented cases of debt bondage, wage withholding, excessive working hours, beatings of deckhands, passport confiscation, the denial of timely access to medical care, and deaths from violence on hundreds of Chinese fishing ships…
… To get a glimpse into this world, my team and I visited China’s fishing ships in their largest fishing grounds: near the Galapagos Islands; near the Falkland Islands; off the Coast of Gambia; and in the Sea of Japan, near Korea. Occasionally, Chinese captains permitted me to board their vessels to talk to crew, or to interview officers by radio….
…Many deckhands spend over two years at sea without touching land or communicating with their families, and they work long shifts that often last more than twelve hours. Some contract beriberi…
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese fishing ships often used Indonesian deckhands, but with the global lockdowns in response to the pandemic, captains shifted to primarily Chinese crews…