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00:00:30.000Welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.
00:00:39.720On today's show, we'll be speaking with Shannon Service, an investigative reporter and producer.
00:00:48.360It's really hard to explain or overstate how just normal this had become.
00:00:55.120I mean, this practice of slavery and forced labor has been going on over 20 years in Thailand, and it's on a scale that it's just how things are done.
00:01:09.160Shannon has done work for the BBC, PBS, National Public Radio, The Guardian of London, Slate and Newsweek, among others.
00:01:18.140She has reported from Iraq, Israel, Palestine, and Croatia on everything from the ravages of war to the intimacies of heartbreak.
00:01:26.940She co-produced a series for Morning Edition about slavery on Thai fishing boats.
00:01:32.200The documentary and virtual reality films she directed on the same subject, Ghost Fleet, went to Telluride, Sundance, Berlin, and Toronto International Film Festivals.
00:01:41.900She has won several awards, including an Edward R. Murrow Award, a National Press Photographers Association Award, a Best New Director Award, and a Knight Award for Best Narrative Science Journalism.
00:01:54.740welcome shannon thank you so much for joining me on the show like i was mentioning earlier
00:02:02.200i'm so moved and chilled by your documentary ghost fleet and before we dive in i really want
00:02:08.880to encourage all of our listeners to watch this incredibly important film the images and the
00:02:14.840faces of the people i met through the film they've been with me they've been looking at me in my
00:02:20.900mind's eye and it's a film that really touches our humanity in such a strong way and these people
00:02:30.000these modern day slaves are not sacrifice people they're real people and it's so important that we
00:02:37.300take the time to give them the respect of learning about what's happening to them and you've done
00:02:44.120such an incredible job in opening our eyes so thank you so much shannon well thank you
00:02:50.740I really appreciate the thoughtfulness and the openness that you approach the film with.
00:02:56.760And I'm really excited to be with you here today.
00:03:01.900So our conversation today will dig into issues surrounding the Thai fishing industry.
00:03:07.660And though many of us may have read an article or two about overfishing or exploitation within the seafood trade,
00:03:14.160I think the real depths of these abuses remain quite obscured within our everyday lives.
00:03:20.740And your film, Ghost Fleet, exposes the dark side of illegal and unregulated fishing, immersing viewers into the story of human trafficking and slavery at sea.
00:03:31.140And for listeners who haven't seen the film, I'm wondering if you could give us a bit of a background on the central issues of the documentary and describe the journey that men face when tricked or trafficked onto these fishing vessels.
00:03:43.260The film follows a really remarkable woman named Patima, and she is Thai herself. She found out about slavery in ways that I can describe a little bit later, but she found out about slavery at sea inside the Thai fishing fleet and was so outraged that she wanted to do something about it.
00:04:03.380she and her husband, Sompong. So the film follows her and her right-hand guy, Tan Lin, who himself
00:04:09.900was enslaved for over a decade as they go out and they scour these remote islands in Indonesia
00:04:16.240where men who've been enslaved on these fishing boats, they'll see land. Sometimes after a decade,
00:04:21.500they won't see land at all for many, many, many years. And as soon as they see land, they'll jump
00:04:27.140ship. They end up scattered all over these islands, not just in Indonesia, but our film
00:04:32.620follows Patama and Tan Lin as they take an expedition to a particular group of islands
00:04:37.260where there are a lot of men. And they're looking for castaways, people who've been completely cut
00:04:42.580off from their family and from their homeland for a long time, so they can reunite them with
00:04:47.520their families and bring them home. So these are two really incredible heroes. And we're with them
00:04:53.500in Verite, which is documentary speak for real time. You're actually with them on the journey
00:04:58.240as they're going on this boat from island to island looking for men.
00:05:02.420And so we really try to use this incredible heroism of these environmental and human rights
00:05:08.800heroes to get into the darker subject of slavery at sea, which in effect really fundamentally
00:06:10.680And Thailand, which is a relatively prosperous country, particularly in Southeast Asia, a lot of the Thai fishermen started leaving the sectors looking for more family-friendly work where they could make more money.
00:06:20.940And the fishing industry was suddenly short, tens of thousands of men a year.
00:06:24.940So instead of fixing the conditions, providing better pay, making sure that men can be flown home, adjusting the way fishing worked, making it safer, instead of all of that, some less scrupulous captains and owners decided to start buying men off of human trafficking gangs and putting them on the boats.
00:06:45.180And once they're on board, there's nothing but oceans.
00:07:12.480So it takes a lot of violence to keep the whole situation under control and a lot of psychological strength on behalf of the men to survive it and to help each other. So it's an incredibly pressure-full world, full of heroes, but also full of villains.
00:07:28.080I thought about that watching the film so many of the things you mentioned but definitely the
00:07:34.760willpower of these men psychologically to survive out on sea for so long and to keep
00:07:41.720some form of sanity there's so many horrible things going on in the world but watching the film
00:07:48.920I mean it's hard for me to even speak to the atrocities of it and how I could even relate
00:07:55.740to what they must be going through these men who are enslaved and and yeah and patima gosh
00:08:02.360just what an angel just to mention again she's a labor activist and co-founder of the labor
00:08:09.320protection network and while she and her team work to rescue these fishermen and obtain
00:08:15.080compensation for them and really seems like she also gives a lot of emotional support
00:08:40.060So I'd be curious to know more about how LPN works on the ground
00:08:43.740and anything you can share about the structure
00:08:45.880of their intelligence networks and trafficking efforts.
00:08:48.620Yeah, that's a really, really great question. It's a phenomenal story, actually.
00:08:54.560Fatima and her husband, Sumphong, are labor rights organizers, as you mentioned. And
00:08:59.520they opened their doors in Bangkok, really just, they thought, just to do some migrant labor
00:09:05.100organizing, you know, like a lot of stronger economies. Thailand attracts migrants from
00:09:09.820neighboring countries because the Thai baht is so much stronger than their own currency.
00:09:14.460And there's a lot of stronger economies. There's a lot of exploitation of immigrant workers as
00:09:18.220well. So they opened their doors to do some labor organizing, and they developed a reputation of
00:09:25.260being very kind, good people inside the immigrant community. And at the time, this was well over 10
00:09:33.260years ago, I can't remember the exact date, but at the time, there was absolutely no organization
00:09:38.360set up for men who'd survived slavery at sea, or even men who'd survived slavery. There's a number
00:09:45.060of organizations in Southeast Asia for women and children who survived trafficking and forms of
00:09:51.520slavery, but none for men. So they had this reputation of being very kind, good Thai people
00:09:58.640who wanted to help immigrants to get their rights and get what they deserve. And so pretty soon,
00:10:05.500men started showing up on their doorstep who had been enslaved on these fishing boats. And at first
00:10:11.060it was sort of a trickle of men. But after a while, dozens of men started showing up on their
00:10:16.100doorstep. And they immediately began providing the support services that they were able to,
00:10:21.560but of course, they're very under-resourced. And one of the things that they began doing was
00:10:26.360trying to help the men psychologically, because many of them, as we've touched on,
00:10:31.600have gone through horrors that are just really unimaginable for us, unless you've survived it.
00:10:36.240And so what that means is that often the men are their own medicine because it's very difficult to reintegrate into a society that doesn't understand what you've been through.
00:10:49.040So by keeping the men together and by training the men in different skills, they were able to sort of help each other and heal each other. But their numbers were growing. And pretty soon it became evident that this was a major, major problem and one that was going completely unaddressed sort of in the broader Thai discourse and in the global discourse.
00:11:10.360so patama started trying to get the attention of bigger organizations that had more resources and
00:11:17.600could potentially help but she wasn't really getting traction and i'm not totally sure why
00:11:22.360but i also think it might have sounded a little bit outlandish because essentially the men that
00:11:27.500were with her were saying well i'm actually lucky because i got back and i'm okay relatively but
00:11:33.880there were men on my boat who jumped ship and she pulled out a big map and they would circle on the
00:11:39.880map, like this guy jumped ship here, or a couple of people escaped off of my boat onto these remote
00:11:46.180islands. And I don't even know if there's civilization or what's happening on those
00:11:48.760islands. And so pretty soon she had this huge map with all of these red circles around all
00:11:53.480of these islands where she and Sompong believed men were stranded and she wasn't really able to
00:11:59.880get the attention of people who could help. So eventually she said, all right, well,
00:12:04.840there's a lot of circles around a particular island called Benjina, which for various reasons
00:12:09.620is a place where a lot of men escape. So she decided to go check it out herself. And she went
00:12:15.940and found about 200 men on that first rescue and ended up working with a Thai journalist named Yam
00:12:22.280to help rescue those men and to bring the issue up to attention. So she and Sompong work on this
00:12:28.320issue in various ways, everything from providing direct services to the men who show up, to finding
00:12:33.400and rescuing men who are stranded on these islands, reconnecting them with their families.
00:12:38.320But then, as you also mentioned, when they come home, they need psychological support, job training. Often these boys are kidnapped or trafficked when they're 10 or 11, that this is the only skill they really have is fishing. So trying to get them trained into different sectors.
00:12:54.720and then importantly, really going after the companies that enslaved them in the Thai courts.
00:13:01.240And it's a tough mission because it almost never, I hesitate to say never because maybe
00:13:07.220something's happened recently that I don't know, but they almost never win a case against the
00:13:12.020company. What does happen sometimes is if a guy is injured during his time on board,
00:13:20.040they can get compensation through the insurance company for the injury, but the companies are
00:13:27.140almost never actually successfully prosecuted in court. So LPN, Patna's organization,
00:13:33.520will continue to fight these cases in court, basically to have a public record of the
00:13:38.740companies that are doing it and to work with them and to at least fight back against the company
00:13:44.040and try to get justice. They also have become quite central in what has eventually become a
00:13:50.600global campaign to try to end slavery at sea. Fatima is a tireless advocate, as well as Sompong
00:13:56.760going to different governments and different companies and different seafood industry
00:14:00.720conferences and speaking and really raising the issue of labor in fishing. That's something that
00:14:05.920we need to pay a lot of attention to. So they've been working on all of those different fronts.
00:14:10.480And the latest thing that they're doing, which is actually really inspiring and shows sort of the thoughtfulness and the depth of their approach, is that they have been working with the survivors to train them in organizing so they can become the leaders of their own movement.
00:14:29.360So now they have what's essentially a fisherman's union led by formerly enslaved fishermen to fight for the rights, not just of formerly enslaved fishermen, but of all fishermen, migrant fishermen, Thai fishermen, all fishermen.
00:14:42.920And it's the first real organizing effort of its kind.
00:14:46.920They were on the ground doing this before anyone else.
00:14:50.660So now there's some other groups also working on it.
00:14:54.000And the final thing they're doing is building a fisherman's center outside of Bangkok.
00:14:57.480and the men themselves are actually building it.
00:15:19.080and they'll have been able to stabilize a bit
00:15:21.800because often the cycle of trauma is so big
00:15:25.680that if men go back to their communities and they're traumatized and they're isolated and
00:15:30.500they haven't had support or training then there's a lot of alcohol and drug abuse there's physical
00:15:36.020abuse of wives and family and kids and a lot of ways that the trauma starts to really express
00:15:41.200itself means they're not actually good so she and some point have taken this very very holistic
00:15:46.260approach and by putting the men at the very center having survivors find survivors help
00:15:52.300survivors, trained survivors. It's a very kind of deep approach to the entire situation.
00:15:59.420Wow. They're so incredible. I have so much love for Patima and her partner. And for those of you
00:16:07.320who watch the film, you'll just be so grateful for these people. But yeah, it feels important
00:16:14.640to also ground Ghost Fleet within a broader context and the fishing industry at large, which
00:16:19.720is rife with exploitation of so many kinds. From what I've read on maritime law, there seems to be
00:16:26.660this legal gray area on the high seas where egregious crimes can be committed with impunity,
00:16:33.860whether it be over fishing, the dumping of waste, or human rights abuses. So what makes the fishing
00:16:40.560trade within this region and more generally so vulnerable to human trafficking, slave labor,
00:16:46.240and other forms of exploitation? And why is it so hard to track these abuses within the fishing
00:16:51.200supply chain? Well, you're definitely right that a lot of it comes down to maritime law.
00:16:56.460Unfortunately, our laws are incredibly outdated. And an example would be that we're still working
00:17:03.040with a flagging system that's from a couple hundred years ago. And the idea was, you know,
00:17:08.500in the time of the Spanish Armada, for example, if a boat was flying a Spanish flag and was
00:17:15.100committing piracy and abuses, then Spain was responsible for that boat. And you knew which0.52
00:17:21.720country you could actually go to for repair. But unfortunately, we now essentially have a system
00:17:27.720where countries that don't even have a coastline like Bhutan are flagging boats because they're
00:17:35.660essentially just collecting money and then flagging the boats, giving them a flag and saying,
00:17:39.720yeah, sure, we're responsible for you. But it means that you're just driving around the high
00:17:43.920seas on a boat that doesn't really have any authority or any country behind it that's going
00:17:49.120to take responsibility for it. And this is sort of an aside, but one recent example of this is
00:17:54.760with COVID and the cruise industry. There's a number of cruise lines, big, well-known cruise
00:18:00.640lines that are flagged in the Bahamas or other countries where they can avoid taxes, where they
00:18:06.280can avoid dumping regulations or tight environmental or social or labor practices, right? So you just
00:18:14.620kind of go to the country that has the least amount of regulation, whether it's environmental
00:18:19.440or labor, and they'll get their flag there. But then, of course, as soon as COVID strikes,
00:18:24.400they want to be able to dock and have all the protections of the U.S. And the Coast Guard is
00:18:30.980actually turning them away and saying, no, go to the Bahamas. So it's a bit of a free-for-all. It's
00:18:35.080kind of like having a whole bunch of license plates out there that don't really mean much,
00:18:41.160and the cars are just driving around committing all kinds of crimes. So the system itself is
00:18:47.460kind of one that's had a lot of benign neglect. It's not really in the company's or the government's
00:18:53.380interests at large to regulate them, not only because it's hard. Boats obviously are at sea,
00:19:02.080and it's extremely challenging to track every single boat on the ocean and what it's doing and
00:19:07.060is it legal. But also, to be completely honest, I mean, countries and companies benefit from the
00:19:14.140status quo. So the rampant state of overfishing and illegality is part of what puts so much fish
00:19:22.580on our plates. And fish is something that is only increasing in popularity. So I think there's a
00:19:28.720general recognition that if we were to bring some sort of order to the system that would protect
00:19:34.100the ocean environmentally and protect the men, largely men who work the ocean, we'd see a lot
00:19:39.820less fish. Fish would become a lot more expensive. And I think there's a reluctance to do that.
00:19:46.120So it's not a case where you have sort of a really well-regulated system with some bad actors in it.
00:19:52.220It's a really badly regulated system that kind of surprisingly has some good actors in it because
00:19:57.140the whole thing is set up to not necessarily enforce that. That said, you know, we do have
00:20:02.780inside certain fisheries, like inside the American fishery, it's a much more well-regulated system.
00:20:09.700The men are treated better. The fishing equipment is much more environmentally friendly. It's
00:20:14.260science driven. So it depends on the fish. The fish population is really high this year,
00:20:18.520then you can catch X amount. If it's really low, then you have to catch less. So we do have really
00:20:23.480good fisheries. But the point is that globally, and as soon as you get outside of territorial
00:20:28.000waters, it's a complete disaster. So I think what's happening inside the Thai fishing industry,0.80
00:20:34.520of course, is completely outrageous and totally egregious, and it's slavery and getting worse
00:20:39.680than that, really. And along with slavery comes kidnapping, murder, torture, all the worst crimes
00:20:44.980that we could possibly imagine happen within the context of slavery. But it would be a mistake to
00:20:51.640think that this is completely out of the blue. It's sort of the logical extension of a very,
00:20:57.040very corrupt and crazy system. So in terms of regulation, the UN has been working on trying to
00:21:05.140redraft the laws of the high seas. And there's, of course, pressures in a lot of different
00:21:10.860directions. Fisheries, by and large, are not in a good state. Ocean ecosystems are certainly
00:21:17.340struggling. But at the same time, you have fish as a primary protein source for a lot of countries
00:21:23.760and the demand for fish globally is only going up and up. So trying to figure out how to shift
00:21:30.400this entire system legally is one piece, but then enforcement is a whole other piece. So once you do
00:21:35.420have the laws on the books, how do you actually enforce them? And that takes a lot of money,
00:21:40.420honestly. It takes a lot of money. It takes a lot of willpower. The governments that historically
00:21:44.620have been looking the other way need to step up and start monitoring their ports, monitoring their
00:21:49.740boats, figuring out like 10 men got on this boat and the eight got off. What happened to the two
00:21:54.260men? Where did you actually catch this fish? Can you certify that you didn't go to some other
00:21:58.260country and steal the fish? Can you show us? Because boats are equipped with systems called
00:22:04.220VMS or AIS, vessel monitoring systems, that theoretically, if they were on all the time,
00:22:10.980could show authorities exactly where they've been can prove that they're not going around
00:22:15.500stealing fish stealing men but we don't make fishing boats keep those on we make boats big big
00:22:23.060shipping container boats do it but not fishing boats so fishing boats really are the least
00:22:28.740regulated vessels at sea and they create a whole host of issues so for example with
00:22:36.060Thai fishing. The Gulf of Thailand is the most barren spot in the ocean. So the boats are now
00:22:41.300going further and further away. And they're stealing fish from other countries, which causes
00:22:45.980a whole bunch of other issues. So for example, Tan Lin, who's Pattama's right-hand guy in Ghost
00:22:50.140Fleet, he was kidnapped when he was 14. He's Burmese. He was tripped on board. And once he
00:22:55.960was on board, he was stuck. Immediately, the captain took off for Somalia. Somalia was in a
00:23:00.780state of complete collapse. And so they couldn't defend their waters. They couldn't really muster
00:23:05.720a Navy or a Coast Guard to go out and defend their fisheries. So boats from all over the world,
00:23:11.160legal and illegal boats, were going to Somalia and stealing their fish. And so Somali fishermen
00:23:17.700would come out and fire on the boats. So here you have a 14-year-old Burmese boy who's been enslaved
00:23:23.080on a Thai fishing boat. The Thai fishing captain is stealing fish off the coast of Somalia. Fish is
00:23:29.480one of the primary protein sources for Somalis. So you have, you know, a country that is already0.98
00:23:35.240struggling with essentially governmental collapse and food insecurity. And now you have all these
00:23:39.800boats who are coming and stealing one of their most important protein sources. So the fishermen0.95
00:23:44.460would go out and fire on the boat and try to defend their waters. And there's a number of
00:23:49.260experts who have been able to track that a number of the people who became Somali pirates who were
00:23:55.380actually taking over oil tankers and much bigger boats started out as fishermen who were just
00:24:00.040trying to protect their fishery. So you have this sort of Johnny Appleseed of destruction
00:24:04.740thing happening with fishing boats where they start clearing out one fishery and rather than
00:24:10.640learning and going, oh, well, maybe we should manage this fishery better. Maybe we should give
00:24:13.760the ocean some time to regroup. Maybe we should figure out ways to sustainably fish. They just go
00:24:19.120and overfish other countries and then set off a whole other chain of environmental, social, and
00:24:25.460food insecurities. So it's a really, really massive problem, but it's an international problem. And
00:24:31.480it's an international problem that needs an international response. And unfortunately,
00:24:36.360when it comes to things like climate change and fisheries and anything really that requires all
00:24:41.920of the countries of the world to come together and really tackle something seriously, we don't
00:24:47.420seem to be terribly good at it. So there is this giant pool. If you have one country over here
00:24:53.420that's doing things really well, like for example, the US and you have a bunch of other countries
00:24:58.380that are not, then all it really does is make the American fisher folk, it puts them at
00:25:03.140an economic disadvantage, you know, because the system itself is inherently international
00:25:08.700and the whole thing needs to be tackled internationally.
00:25:10.880So it is complicated, but it's not at all impossible.
00:25:14.220It requires international will and money and seriousness to tackle it.
00:25:19.560And that's one of the reasons that we made Ghost Fleet.
00:25:21.340As a team, we really believe that slavery is the Achilles heel of the entire system.
00:25:27.380If we can really point to how egregious things have gotten on the high seas, the fact is that hundreds of thousands of men, probably deep into the hundreds of thousands of men, have been enslaved to put fish on our plates.
00:25:41.880So for those who don't necessarily inherently care about the state of the oceans, they might care about that issue, about human rights, about what it actually costs to put fish on our plates.
00:25:56.940So the whole thing is extremely connected, and our hope as a team,
00:26:01.220we've taken the film to the UN, to Congress, to multiple seafood conferences.
00:26:05.180We've worked with Fatima and Tunwin who addressed all of those bodies
00:26:08.200to really put a human face on this issue
00:26:10.940and to start appealing to a much bigger sense of what we need to be doing,
00:26:15.880both for the oceans and for the people who work them.
00:31:07.960We're not bringing in the actual price of what something like fish should be.
00:31:13.480There are some sort of getting a little off topic here, but there are some promising signs in other directions or some companies that are looking at trying to create fish kind of like the beyond meat of fish.
00:31:27.480I don't know how good it is. I haven't tried it.
00:31:29.060But things like that could be helpful because even farmed fish, there's a whole host of environmental and social issues that come with farmed fish. So I think the appetite for fish is huge. And it's not just in the West, it's in China and around the world. Fish has just become quite popular in a way that it wasn't before.
00:31:49.440And it's also a bit problematic that there's only certain kinds of fish that are popular.
00:31:54.860So, you know, in the U.S., when we think of fish, we think of tuna, we think of salmon, we think of shrimp, we think of a handful of fish, maybe trout.
00:32:01.760What we don't think about is what is local, seasonal, and abundant so that even if you're on a lake or near a river or near a stream or near the ocean, what's the fish that's actually native to your bio region?
00:33:39.900And if I have an apple, I know that it's from New Zealand and it's conventional.
00:33:44.820So I have a lot of information about a lot of other food, but fish just sort of shows up.
00:33:49.860One of the things that we're trying to do is it's around the price of fish and understanding why the price of fish needs to go up to sustain livelihoods and sustain the ocean, but also to encourage a shift in how we approach fish at all.
00:34:04.600and find other fish that is more abundant, that is less expensive, that's actually going to be
00:34:09.260healthier for you because it's coming from closer to where you live. So all of that, it's a fairly
00:34:14.500big shift, but ideally we can start bringing fish into the ecological and food discussions we have
00:34:20.880about some of the other things. Yeah, I really agree with so much of what you're saying
00:34:28.360in terms of the folks who live in the regions where there are fish they should really be getting
00:34:36.940the first dibs on that fish because so many people they need that fish it's subsistence
00:34:43.880for them it's subsistence hunting fishing otherwise they don't have the kind of access to
00:34:49.300supermarkets and co-ops that a lot of us do in the United States and even you know I think about
00:34:54.540the work I've done with fisheries and fisher folk in Alaska so much of the time they go out the
00:35:00.740fishermen work really hard they have to sell it at a very low cost then the people in Alaska don't
00:35:06.420get to fill up their freezers because they're having to export their food and their livelihood
00:35:12.300at a lower rate and they have to catch more and more and more just to keep up with the same income
00:35:17.900So there's a real big issue with the lower price of fish. And yeah, I like the idea of eating invasive fish when possible and just really deciding that it's not important for all of us to eat fish.
00:35:32.000If we are not by a source that we can harvest from sustainably and respectfully, then it may just not be okay for us to do that.
00:35:40.280And I know it's hard for some of us who like it or it's become habitual.
00:35:45.160And of course, there's so much health research about why fish is healthy for our bodies.
00:35:49.560But if we're hurting people and our ecological systems just to get omegas or something, it doesn't add up.
00:35:57.960it doesn't actually make sense to compartmentalize the health of ourselves versus the earth. So I
00:36:05.080really think it's important to speak to that. And I found this statistic that the United States is
00:36:11.160the biggest customer of Thai fish and pet food exports from Thailand have more than doubled
00:36:17.640since 2009, reaching $190 million in 2014. So for all of us who are in the United States listening
00:36:25.580to this we really actually have a pretty big as i've just said we're the biggest customer of thai
00:36:32.820fish so we really have a lot of responsibility in this so i just wanted to mention that and
00:36:39.900as you've spoken to in this conversation that decades of overfishing has decimated fish stocks
00:36:47.020in the region surrounding thailand and that the average catch in both the gulf of thailand and the
00:36:52.480the Andaman Sea, thank you, has plummeted by more than 86% since 1966, making Thai waters among the
00:37:03.980most barren overfished regions on the planet. So it's clear that illegal fishing plays a big
00:37:09.840role in this. However, we also know that poor management in commercial fishing is also plundering
00:37:15.320earth's fisheries. And so I wonder if the boundary between, quote, good industry practices and
00:37:21.600criminalized, quote, bad actors is as clear cut as we may think. So from your time reporting on
00:37:28.100the complexities of the sector, have the lines between illegal and legal fishing been blurred
00:37:33.620when it comes to overfishing and labor exploitation? Another great question. You know, I think that
00:37:40.000that's what I was trying to point towards when I was saying that the system itself is really
00:37:47.480problematic and within that you have good actors as opposed to having a really good system with
00:37:53.820bad actors and as an example i did a story about a company called china tuna and this was for the
00:38:01.920guardian a little while back and china tuna is one of the bigger tuna companies they go big boats
00:38:07.640they go out they catch a lot of tuna i believe they're the top tunas acquired to japan so big
00:38:13.760company and they were filing for a hundred million dollar IPO. And they had a problem because when
00:38:19.500you file for an IPO, you're trying to convince investors that the thing that you're doing is
00:38:26.300only going to go up and you're going to make them a ton of money. But the problem is that
00:38:29.320tuna stocks are crashing around the world, particularly the high value tuna stocks like
00:38:33.100bluefin and yellowfin. So they had this issue where they wanted to have an IPO. They want to
00:38:39.700make a ton of money, but they're putting more boats out there to catch fewer fish, which doesn't
00:38:44.260really add up for investors. So in the IPO, they basically said the emperor has no clothes and
00:38:50.140everybody knows this, who knows fishing, but it was pretty remarkable because they did it publicly
00:38:54.900and they said, well, here's the deal. Yes, there's less fish. That might concern investors,
00:39:00.020but don't worry because even though the world gets together from time to time and sets quotas
00:39:06.160and says, okay, well, there's this many yellow fins, we can only catch this much. And China0.71
00:39:09.820gets this part of the catch. It's up to China to regulate how much fish is actually taken from
00:39:16.040their piece of the pie, right? So China Tuna in our IPO writes, well, don't worry about0.97
00:39:22.820this scenario because China doesn't regulate. China basically just lets us catch however much
00:39:29.020we want. And so we plan to put more boats on the water to go after a dwindling and collapsing
00:39:34.000fishery. And we're just going to fish and fish and fish as hard as we want. And nobody's really
00:39:39.240going to stop us. So go ahead and invest in our company. It was only remarkable because they said
00:39:44.980it. It's completely how this works. It works this way almost everywhere. And so it really is the
00:39:53.560system itself. I know it's kind of dead and weird language when people who care about oceans start
00:39:58.120talking about IUU fishing, you know, illegal, underreported and unregulated. Well, underreported
00:40:03.760and unregulated is just as bad as illegal. Illegal fishing is when you have a boat like
00:40:10.020Tunwin's boat with a Thai captain, slave crew. They go into Somali waters. They're not allowed1.00
00:40:16.260to be there. They have no fishing license for that region. They're not paying the Somali people
00:40:19.880anything to be there and they're just stealing fish. That's illegal. But not far behind and1.00
00:40:25.700Probably worse, to be honest, in terms of the state of fisheries around the world, is underreported and unregulated fishing.
00:40:33.460And what that means is you have these really big boats.
00:40:35.700We have boats now that are the size of city blocks that are dragging gigantic miles-long nets through the ocean, clear-cutting the bottom of the ocean, just scooping up everything in their path, and they are not really regulated.
00:40:51.140So they might be legal, they might have their paperwork in order, and they might have a flag, but again, it could be sort of a flag of Bhutan or some country that doesn't really care what they're doing, and they're just out there taking as much fish as they want, and they're not meeting quotas, and they're not, the quotas are there, they're set up to try to protect the fishery, protect the ocean, protect the people who make their livelihood from the sea, and protect oceanic communities who need fish.
00:41:16.200They just ignore it. And there's nobody there who's regulating them or reporting. So the combination of illegal, unregulated, and underreported is just a real catastrophe for the ocean and for people who rely on it. So the system itself is pretty janky.
00:41:34.180Yeah, as many big systems are these days. Yes. And in researching for this episode, I was curious to understand how fishing practices in Thailand have changed, if at all, in recent years.
00:41:48.020And I read that after much groundbreaking reporting and international pushback, that the government implemented a broad program of reforms in 2015 to, quote, clean up the Thai fishing industry.
00:41:59.000In their trafficking in persons report, the Thai government stated that between May 2015 and January 2016, no cases of child labor or forced labor were found, though watchdog groups report otherwise, and I'm not surprised about that.
00:42:15.080And now the EU has since lifted its yellow card warning, and the US has upgraded Thailand's trafficking in persons rating. But I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit about the effectiveness of these intergovernmental checks and balances and where the crisis currently stands.
00:42:31.140Yeah, so my reporting partner and I, her name is Becky Palmstrom, she and I broke the story about slavery at sea and slavery on Thai fishing boats in 2012.
00:47:08.100While watching these just harrowing testimonies from survivors,
00:47:31.380a question that kept turning in my mind was how those rescued are doing today
00:47:36.420And the experiences and conditions these men share are just horrifying, from being drugged and forced to work 22-hour shifts to being whipped with toxic stingray tails.
00:47:48.800And the United Nations found that 59% of trafficked migrants interviewed aboard Thai fishing vessels reported witnessing the murder of a fellow worker.
00:47:57.400So the physical and psychological trauma is just really unimaginable and gives context to Patima's estimate that only 10% of the men who return are able to reintegrate back into their communities.
00:48:10.120So could you speak more in depth about the complexity of returning home and how survivors find peace and healing?
00:48:18.880It is a pressure cooker of unimaginable cruelty, really, on board these boats.
00:48:23.760And often the men will have to turn off pieces of themselves that make them human. They'll have to turn off the part of themselves that tries to think about family or remembers being home because it makes it too painful to be where they are.
00:48:42.720there's a number of men who will not sleep they'll try very hard not to sleep because they'll often
00:48:47.780dream about being somewhere else and they wake up on board the boat there's a pretty common thing
00:48:53.760too where if you've been on board for a long time it's dangerous to think for yourself right it's
00:49:00.040dangerous to have too clear a sense of your own boundaries or your sense of self because
00:49:04.140essentially you have to do what the captain says what the slave master says and that's that and
00:49:08.820if you don't, you get punished or killed. And so the part of them that has free will and can think
00:49:15.100through what they want to do for themselves just gets shut down because it's easier. These are
00:49:19.420all survival tactics to get through something that is incredibly, incredibly hard. So slowly
00:49:25.500over time, the men begin shutting down different pieces of themselves, whether it's their empathy
00:49:31.000or their free will. Often men will go crazy. It's a really common response because it literally is
00:49:38.120And so when they are able to return home, they're facing what a lot of returning vets face or a lot of people who go into extremely different and very intense situations.
00:49:54.460You come back to your community and your community is more or less the same, but you're not at all.
00:50:01.240and that feeling of not being able to fit in not being able to go home again when home is all you
00:50:08.960ever dreamed of when you're on this boat and facing unbelievable cruelty a lot of men just
00:50:14.320really really pray and hope to return home and then they go home and all of the horrors that
00:50:20.120happened on board that they had to kind of suppress in order to just to get through all of
00:50:24.080those come back and these pieces themselves that were functional before they had to shut down in
00:50:28.860order to survive. So the combination of all of it is just really hard for anyone to do by
00:50:35.120themselves. So that is extremely tough for people trying to reintegrate and is really the reason
00:50:44.240behind LPN's Fisherman Center to be able to create a place where there is therapy, where there is
00:50:51.000healing, where you can work in farming or motorcycle maintenance and the men can be
00:50:57.660around other men who've gone through what they've gone through and be able to integrate to be able
00:51:05.420to have their experience mirrored and validated by other men but still be off the boat and in
00:51:10.960society and sort of slowly bridge over into being able to be functional in a community. It's
00:51:18.220extremely important and when the Fisherman Center opens it should be quite soon it'll be the first
00:51:24.740one of its kind in the world that is dedicated for men who are have survived this particular
00:51:30.560form of slavery so it's extremely important not just for the men themselves their psychological
00:51:35.320health and healing but for the communities they're going back to so that their trauma is not actually
00:51:42.000coming out in destructive ways that impacts the community yeah i can i'm sorry did that
00:51:49.600answer the question or is there another oh well I mean there's so much to the question and I know
00:51:57.440I appreciate what you said it's really horrific and I could imagine it being so difficult to
00:52:03.640return home even if they wanted to because of how much they've been changed and probably like shame
00:52:10.720and trauma and just so much that they'd have to go through and like it kind of reminds me of
00:52:17.580vets coming back from war just you know they come home to a place that hasn't experienced what
00:52:25.120they've experienced and that loneliness that can come from that so thank you for saying that and
00:52:30.540as we've spoken about today the crisis of abuse and trafficking within the seafood supply chain
00:52:35.460spans across such a wide field of actors from the big industry to corrupt law enforcement to
00:52:42.500bureaucratic governments. And it's interesting because throughout Ghost Fleet, we're made aware
00:52:48.040that much of this industry, however, is dominated by a few select corporations. And I'm curious to
00:52:54.540hear why none of these corporations are explicitly named and your thoughts on the question of who is
00:53:01.420really to blame for these atrocities. And then maybe a second part to that question is just
00:53:06.280any of the challenges you faced on the ground and digging for a story that a powerful industry has
00:53:11.520a vested interest in silencing. We made the decision not to go after Western corporations.
00:53:21.740There is one company that's named in the film, it's a Thai company called PCT Pusaka.
00:53:27.080And that company has an illegal prison and an illegal torture chamber on an island called
00:53:33.820Benjina. And we did call them out because they were already publicly exposed through
00:53:39.640Katama's work. The reason we decided not to go after particular companies that are tied to this
00:53:48.620abuse is because the practice of slavery and forced labor in fishing and the Thai fishing
00:53:56.140industry is so pervasive. It's the pattern and practice of fishing that if we were to go after
00:54:04.640one company, like let's say Thai Union, for example, and say, this company is the bad guy,
00:54:10.280and then that company changed their ways, which actually they have, then it would give the false
00:54:15.720sense of security that, oh, okay, it's all fine. That's actually not the case, right? There is a lot
00:54:21.280of pressure that Western companies can bring to bear and are starting to bring to bear. But I think
00:54:28.340that there's a totally valid time and place for naming certain companies and saying, okay,
00:54:34.720you guys are the ones responsible for this. But when the practice is so widespread that if we
00:54:42.080were to pick a particular boat and trace it back to the supply chain and hit, let's say Nestle,
00:54:47.240that's just random because if we pick the boat next to it, it would go to a completely different
00:54:51.120company. So at a certain point, when it's this, you know, it's everywhere, it becomes almost unfair
00:54:59.480and it diminishes the size of the problem to say it's this company or this handful of companies
00:55:04.900behind it. So that was the big reason that we didn't do it. And I'm sorry, help me with the
00:55:11.160second part. Oh, right. The challenges that we faced in uncovering this. So when Becky and I
00:55:16.120were doing our original reporting back in 2012, that broke the story on Morning Edition,
00:55:19.960And we spent six months throughout Southeast Asia really investigating this issue. How is it that hundreds of thousands of men and boys can cross international borders, go through ports, get onto boats and just disappear? Who knew? Like what governments knew and when did they know and why didn't they do anything? Just sort of the standard investigative reporting questions.
00:55:41.400I was surprised at how much we were able to uncover, simply because it is such a pattern
00:55:51.860in practice. It's really hard to explain or overstate how just normal this had become. I mean,
00:55:59.520this practice of slavery and forced labor has been going on over 20 years in Thailand, and it's on a
00:56:06.120scale, that it's just how things are done. So we would walk into ports, some of the most notorious
00:56:12.760ports, for example, Songkwa in Southern Thailand, where it's just very well known that the brothels
00:56:19.700and some of the seedier bars in the port town will drug a guy's drink. So a Thai guy will walk1.00
00:56:26.400into a brothel, he'll walk into a bar, he'll have a beer, and he'll wake up on board a boat.
00:56:30.940So there's a very direct link between the brothels, the bars, and the boat owners.
00:56:37.900And Becky and I were actually in San Juan.
00:56:39.340We would walk into brothels and just ask about it.
00:56:41.300They would tell us, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.0.99
00:56:45.620Or we would go, we were in the port itself, standing on a boat, talking to the captain,
00:56:51.360when a trafficker showed up and put a guy on board the boat.
00:56:54.620And he was very obviously drugged and super sleepy and not in great shape.
00:57:00.000And we were politely asked to get off the boat, and we were very friendly as they cast off, and then they left. And we were in such shock that we couldn't even figure out, what do we do? Do we do something? Like, what do we do? But to them, I mean, this is the middle of the day, and they have two blonde reporters standing on the boat with recording equipment, and it didn't even occur to them that this is a problem, because it's the pattern in practice.
00:57:21.320So that's how important and big this issue is. It's not a bunch of bad actors or a few, a handful of bad captains. It's how the industry has been able to pump cheap fish into the West for decades.0.52
00:57:36.800So for us, we found it relatively safe, safer than you would imagine to be asking these questions.
00:57:45.520The biggest threats for us in the original reporting really came from the police because the police were so involved in it.
00:57:52.300There was a very famous police station in the biggest port town, Sumitza Khan, that would go onto boats and bused men on immigration charges.
00:58:02.320So you have men who've been trafficked, or you just have immigrant fishermen, they're on a boat, and the police would bust them on immigration charges, bring them to jail, and then sell them straight out of police lockup to other captains.
00:58:13.580So they're completely involved in it, and they're being paid off by the traffickers.0.57
00:58:17.200And when we started asking questions of the police, then we were followed and definitely felt threatened.
00:58:22.580But in general, when we first began reporting on it, it was just how things are done.0.61
00:58:28.960And it's sort of like asking about immigrant labor in California farms.
00:58:33.140You're not going to get a lot of pushback because it's just how it is, how it's done.0.98
00:58:38.640So if things got a little bit dodgier, for sure, when we were making the film, first
00:58:42.960of all, because Patima is quite well known now for her work, she's helped rescue over
00:58:47.960She's not the most popular person among the slave-owning captains and companies or among
00:58:55.120the police who are paid off to look the other way.
00:58:58.380But we took a number of security protocols and made sure that we did everything in our power to keep our crew and our team, including Fatima and her team, safe.
00:59:09.580And also, really importantly, to make sure the men that we talked to were safe, that we didn't just roll into communities and places with a bunch of Westerners and cameras, but we sent in field producers who are Indonesian, since we're filming in Indonesia mainly, to find out, like, is it okay if we talk to this person?
00:59:26.900Are there company people around here? What's the security situation? Would it be better if we go somewhere else? It would be better if we don't come at all. You don't see that part in the film. But when you're dealing with corrupt slave owning murderous captains and companies, there's a lot of thought that goes into every single situation to try to make sure that everybody stays safe.
00:59:47.200mm-hmm yeah yeah I could imagine there being a lot of a lot of decisions you had to make while
00:59:55.800creating this film and I'm just so grateful you did and as we close this conversation Shannon
01:00:02.240I wanted to mention that the film ends on a really striking image of a dinner plate
01:00:06.820then rewinds backwards from plate to grocery store to fishing harbor and so on and the last
01:00:12.720screen reads, major brands, supermarkets, and restaurants around the world are still selling
01:00:17.800fish caught by slaves. And I was left with this question of how we might bring humanity to a
01:00:23.920supply chain that in our fractured society can often feel so far away. So for our last question
01:00:30.100today, I wanted to ask you more importantly, how can listeners at this moment take action to end
01:00:36.340overfishing and slavery at sea, whether that be through our choices on consumption or if there's
01:00:42.200other ways that we can get involved? Yeah, well, first, I definitely want to credit my co-director
01:00:47.140and lead cinematographer, Jeff. That powerful sequence at the end of the film was really
01:00:52.300brilliantly conceived. And while I'm very, very grateful and psyched to talk to you today, there's
01:00:57.600kind of two of us that you're talking to because he was definitely my partner the whole way.
01:01:02.060But as far as what people can do, there's a range of things. There's going to the GoSleep
01:01:08.580website, ghostleet.com. And through there, you can donate directly to LPN and donate directly
01:01:14.820to this Fisherman's Center and to their work, both raising the awareness of this issue on the
01:01:19.480global scale and helping men very directly on the front lines. You could also sign up for,
01:01:26.600it's a very low traffic newsletter. Essentially, what we're trying to do is the team goes to
01:01:31.760international seafood conferences and goes to the governance organizations and tries to help
01:01:36.280change this every once in a long while we'll ask people to register their support by sending an
01:01:42.140email so there's that asking where your fish comes from was really really important there was a time
01:01:49.240when blood diamonds wasn't known as a thing and the whole industry changed when people started
01:01:57.780asking where did this diamond come from is this a blood diamond is this an ethically sourced diamond
01:02:02.080Where did it come from? So even though often your waiter or the fish buyer at the local supermarket
01:02:10.060might not know the answer, that is kind of the point, just starting to put that awareness into
01:02:17.020their minds that their customers do want to know, that they care how it was caught, where it was
01:02:21.040caught. It's already slavery and it's fish. Do we know? That is a really, really key piece, along
01:02:26.240with trying to think a little bit more thoughtfully about the kind of fish that we're eating, maybe
01:02:31.780eating less fish, but higher quality and more local to the extent you're able to, will have
01:02:37.420dietary and health benefits for you and certainly help those who are enslaved to try to keep fish
01:02:43.660abundant and cheap. So those really are the major things. As I mentioned earlier, the UN is trying
01:02:50.100to reconstruct the laws of the high seas at the moment. So you have the opportunity to go onto
01:02:57.240their website and sending emails urging strong support for labor and fisheries that also could
01:03:03.460help as well. Oh, thank you, Shannon, for letting us know how we can get involved and not just be
01:03:09.700complacent in this issue that really just serves these men as sacrifice creatures. Like there's
01:03:19.980just so little respect. And I think that they have not been acknowledged nearly enough in our
01:03:27.260culture. And a lot of us don't know. A lot of us don't even know that slaves and brutally treated
01:03:33.960people are the ones who are catching the dinner or the lunch that we're eating. So such important
01:03:40.120conversation, Shannon. Thank you so much for being with us on For the Wild. This has been a really
01:03:45.900potent conversation. Great. Well, I really appreciate you having me and thank you for
01:03:51.060your thoughtful questions. And I've really enjoyed it.
01:03:53.440Thanks for listening to another episode of For the Wild podcast.