Ship of horrors: life and death on the lawless high seas

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.

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?

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.

Would you also respect a CEO more if he'd commit suicide? Because that's what this captain did.

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.

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.

The rainforest or the company? My housemate is Brazilian, and has a lot to to say about the former.

I got half way through before the ads crashed chrome.

Works fine on iPhone