The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier
“A riveting, terrifying, thrilling story of a netherworld that few people know about, and fewer will ever see . . . The soul of this book is as wild as the ocean itself.” –Susan Casey, best-selling author of The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean
A riveting, adrenaline-fueled tour of a vast, lawless and rampantly criminal world that few have ever seen: the high seas.
There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world’s oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation.
Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion providers, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways — drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Ian Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world. Through their stories of astonishing courage and brutality, survival and tragedy, he uncovers a globe-spanning network of crime and exploitation that emanates from the fishing, oil and shipping industries, and on which the world’s economies rely.
Both a gripping adventure story and a stunning exposé, this unique work of reportage brings fully into view for the first time the disturbing reality of a floating world that connects us all, a place where anyone can do anything because no one is watching.An Amazon Best Book of August 2019: It’s becoming harder to disappear on this increasingly connected, overpopulated planet, so if you’re feeling hemmed in, maybe you should buy a boat. Three-fifths of the planet is covered in water, an expanse so vast that anyone can seemingly get away with anything without consequence. The high seas have always been where the illicit action is, and Ian Urbina—a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist—took to the waves to find it. And did he ever. Urbina traveled the globe on a risky mission, hopping boats to amass a catalog of just about every contemptible human activity imaginable. Smugglers, traffickers, pirates, poachers, stowaways, mercenaries, and polluters fill The Outlaw Ocean’s more than 400 pages, and the theme is overwhelming, often catastrophic degradation: of people, the environment, borders, and the rule of law (or at least its illusion). In the frigid waters of Antarctica’s Southern Ocean, Urbina boards a vigilante vessel on a months-long, slow-burn chase of a notorious fish-poaching operation. In the seaside brothels of Thailand, trafficked prostitutes attract young men who are themselves consigned as slave labor on fishing boats. Armies of private “security” forces kill time aboard floating armories, waiting for their next unofficial deployments. These crimes may seem isolated and remote—drops in the ocean, so to speak—but they don’t occur in a vacuum, or for nothing; they support choices made every day in government, in commerce, and in our homes. The Outlaw Ocean is illuminating, terrifying, and often dismaying. It’s also unique, vitally important, and strangely thrilling. —Jon Foro, Amazon Book Review“A riveting, terrifying, thrilling story of a netherworld that few people know about, and fewer will ever see . . . The soul of this book is as wild as the ocean itself.” –Susan Casey, best-selling author of The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean
A riveting, adrenaline-fueled tour of a vast, lawless and rampantly criminal world that few have ever seen: the high seas.
There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world’s oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation.
Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion providers, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways — drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Ian Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world. Through their stories of astonishing courage and brutality, survival and tragedy, he uncovers a globe-spanning network of crime and exploitation that emanates from the fishing, oil and shipping industries, and on which the world’s economies rely.
Both a gripping adventure story and a stunning exposé, this unique work of reportage brings fully into view for the first time the disturbing reality of a floating world that connects us all, a place where anyone can do anything because no one is watching.
