Award-winning journalist Ian Urbina has been writing about the largely hidden world of the oceans for a decade. He was originally drawn to the topic because he realized few other people were covering the two-thirds of Earth that’s covered in water. But he soon found a deeper mission: a desire to bring light to the life-or-death human and ecological struggles that have long been invisible to those of us on land.
This summer, his nonprofit journalism organization, the Outlaw Ocean Project, has released its podcast’s second season. Among other topics, these episodes detail the supply chain that underlies much of the world’s seafood – including the shrimp or ready-to-cook calamari sitting in the frozen section of the grocery store.
Those food items have stories that might involve everything from secret Chinese trawlers to captive labor to geopolitical deception.
Why We Wrote This
Many people have been learning about their food’s “farm to table” story. But the journey from ocean to table is less known. Journalist Ian Urbina’s work is shedding light on challenges in a largely unpoliced realm.
The Monitor talked recently with Mr. Urbina about the connections between our dinner plates and what happens in the remote, dangerous waters of the ocean – and how journalism can help. The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Can we start with shrimp? I know a lot of people who go to the store, find a bag of frozen shrimp at a good price, and not think much about it. What’s important for them to know about that product?
Well, the first question would be, do we know anything about where it came from? If it’s foreign, which is the vast majority, the sky is the limit on concerns. The core principle is, the longer the supply chain, the more places there are for dark stuff to creep in. And so, if it’s something that’s coming from far, far away, and it’s trading hands 17 times before it ends up on your shelf, then that’s pretty worrisome. The climate impacts, the potential for forced labor, the potential use of antibiotics, the ocean health impacts – all those things are going to be much greater when you have a really long supply chain.
Your podcast delves into that supply chain – as it did during its first season. What surprised you from your reporting this time?
In 2015, the Associated Press, the New York Times, and the Guardian were all over the issue of sea slavery, as the term was called. And it was really focused on Thailand and the South China Sea. So, what was surprising to me, jumping to 2024 with the India investigation [Episode 5], is that the very things that drove the shrimp industry out of Thailand – a lot of Western brands left because they were not happy about the bad press about forced labor – the very things same things that we reported in 2014 are happening in India in terms of the captive labor, the conditions, debt bondage, violence. So that surprised me. But in some ways, it didn’t. Capital moves where it can do its thing.
But aren’t there seafood industry monitors, or certifications?
The Monterey Bay Aquarium in California has a ranking system, but historically, it is only worried about the environmental issues – is this species running out or not? They’ve sort of looked over in the direction of labor issues, but not really, and even on the “is this a safe species to be purchasing?” question, they are not really able to check the supply chains.
The private industry certification thing is a sham. It’s fundamentally flawed because the people being policed are paying the police, so there’s already a conflict of interest. Much of what is used to prove that rules are being followed are self-reported. These auditors never get on the vessels.
What was new in the China investigation was China [Episodes 6 and 7]. China is a black box where, if you are a journalism outfit, or you’re an NGO, or you’re a company, and you agree to go in there, you’re going to go in there playing by their rules. And if you break their rules, you’re going to get kicked out of the country. One of the rules is, you don’t mention the Uyghurs. You don’t mention North Korea. You don’t talk about human rights violations. And you’re not doing unannounced spot checks.
Ed Ou//The Outlaw Ocean Project
Chinese dominance in this supply chain comes up repeatedly in your episodes this season.
It’s the reality, and it only becomes more so by the month and by the year. And it’s really China’s dominance on the water generally, whether it’s navies, coast guards, technology, research, Big Pharma, mining the sea floor, companies looking to go into seabed mining. If it’s on the water, China is crushing everyone else.
On fishing, think of it this way: You have near-shore fishing and distant-water fishing. Distant-water fishing refers to ships that go outside of your national waters, so into high seas or foreign waters. Those are the vessels that tend to be industrial scale, so 40 or more guys, huge ships. And they tend to stay offshore anywhere from 6 months to 3 years and never come to port. They go really, really far. Some of them traverse the entire planet before they come back to home port.
So, if you’re going to measure the world’s countries on the size just of their presence on the water when it comes to fishing, China’s distant-water fleet, if you ask the Chinese government: 2,700 vessels. If you ask a think tank here in DC: 17,000 vessels. You ask us, we put the number at 6,500.
Even if you use the Chinese conservative number of 2,700 vessels, it’s still five times bigger than the next largest fleet.
Now, let’s go on land. So, a French ship goes out to Togo, fishes tuna, brings it back, freezes it, and then sends it to China to be processed. They freeze it again, send it back. A Spanish ship does squid. A U.S. ship does whatever.
Most of the processing left the United States and Europe in the late ’80s and early ’90s, because it’s really labor-intensive, environmentally pretty complicated, and needs to be done on scale. And China became the sweatshop of the planet in the late ’80s and early ’90s. So now, there is no processing capacity, really, outside of China.
So, what that means is, not only are they pulling more marine life out of the water, but much of the marine life being pulled out of the water by other folks is being is sent – because it’s so much cheaper and faster – to China.
Given all this, what would you recommend an everyday consumer do?
I think the first step that we all should take when we’re trying to answer the question of, “What do I do about any of this,” is step back and redefine who we are. Especially in the U.S., we think of ourselves as “consumers.” Like, we’re even called that normally, more so than parents, siblings, lovers, taxpayers, voters, donors. We wear lots of hats, and our sole identity isn’t just what we buy.
So first, step back and realize you wear like 12 different hats in your daily life. And with each, you can do something little that might help shed light or move the needle. If you’re a voter, you can think, “I’ve read about how bad this issue is – whatever the issue – and I kind of want to vote for this woman, or this guy, and but I want to see where they are on that. You’ve also got 11 other categories. Every year, I send $20 to some NGO doing good stuff. Who should it be? You’re at Thanksgiving, and there’s that grumpy uncle, and you’re having a civil conversation of political differences, and you bring up this topic, and you go a couple of rounds, respectfully. You’re trying to move the needle in all these capacities.
And, yes, you can also buy differently. You can jump on the internet and say, I love shrimp. I’m not giving it up, but I kind of want shrimp that’s not as bad. Let me just Google and see what brands seem to be better. And you spend 20 minutes educating yourself, and then, at Walmart, you choose that brand instead of that one.
Don’t get cornered into thinking this is an answer to the question of, “How do we win the war?” The war is unwinnable. You just fight battles every day and try to move in the right direction. Because if you don’t set that ground rule, you’ll get a skeptic who’s eager to say to you, “Oh, that doesn’t do anything.” OK, it probably doesn’t do much. It’s not going to win the war. It’s not going to solve the problem. It’s not going to end climate change or slavery or whatever. But something is more than nothing. And personally, I think it’s ethical to be trying. Even if you’re aware it’s not perfect.
Throughout the podcast season, you find yourself in moments that are quite dangerous. You’re jumping from one ship to another in the middle of the ocean. In Libya, your team is kidnapped and held at gunpoint. It’s a lot. What keeps you doing this work?
I’m not an adrenaline junkie. I don’t like danger, but sometimes it’s there in those places.
For me, even I was even really young, I struggled with the disparity that exists between those who won the lottery of birth and those who didn’t; how we might be right next to each other and how that just didn’t seem fair.
My parents kind of beat into me the idea of, “Hey, use your lottery to try to make things better. Choose what the things are and what you mean by better, but like, you got to do something.”
So this is where I ended up doing something. … I don’t think I’m ever going to win the wars, but at least I’m fighting for something that feels worthy. And the fight for me is doing good journalism.
The Outlaw Ocean podcast, and other journalism from Mr. Urbina and his team, is available at www.theoutlawocean.com.
