When I was 12 my father took me with him when he had lunch with a friend on a US Navy destroyer escort. Since then I’ve been lucky enough to visit everything from a destroyer to an aircraft carrier—even a massive cruise ship. As a military historian I’ve spent years studying ships and the people aboard them. Because roughly 70% of the world is ocean, and of that, only a small fraction of the “standard” sea lanes are used by both military and merchant ships, I’ve always wondered what, if anything, goes on in the other 60%. I just finished a new book, The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina which opened my eyes— WIDE OPEN!!

The Outlaw Ocean is required reading if we want to have even an inkling of what goes on in the rest of the ocean. Urbina, a masterful award-winning journalist, has spent the past five years, (much of the time embedded on a variety of ships) studying illegal fishing, indentured servitude, theft, piracy, abandoned seafarers, pollution of all varieties, oil spills, dumping, off-shore mercenaries and weapons depots—even murder. This is not, repeat NOT, the Love Boat!!

Part stories, part history, The Outlaw Ocean spends significant time discussing the numerous NGOs (non-governmental organizations) dealing with the bad guys. From eco-warriors like Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace to groups such as Coalition of Legal Toothfish Operators and the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Maritime Living Research (CCAML), to government agencies and various organizations of the UN, we see how they attempt to work together to preserve and improve the oceans. But the current, and over-arching, problem is that because states do not have jurisdiction beyond their own territorial limits, rogue ships can roam the rest of the massive oceans with impunity. Only when states follow the same laws of the sea will it become extremely difficult for lawless ships to sail where they please unpunished.

Not only was it harrowing to learn of the way fish, pollution, spills, and dumping is handled, but it was extremely unsettling to learn how deckhands are frequently mistreated. Sailing is a tough job, no two ways about it. But here too we only know what goes on in our small part of the ocean, where merchant seamen are covered by numerous laws and treaties, in addition to important unions, the UN, and major charities like the Seamen’s Church Institute. Yet as Mr. Urbina shows us, it’s a very different world beyond territorial waters and outside the standard sea lanes. From Nigeria to Indonesia to the Antarctic these men (and it’s virtually all men) live and work in indescribable conditions for, in some cases years, for meager wages. They are frequently abused, beaten, and malnourished, sometimes abandoned—all at the whim of the captain. Only relatively recently have groups like Stella Maris International Seafarers Center, Mission to Seafarers, and Human Rights at Sea, to name just a few, been able to truly help seamen.

I’ve mention only a fraction of what’s covered in The Outlaw Ocean—I could go of, but it’s better if you read it. This is one of the rare books which is both weighty, important, and a page-turner—one of the best, most useful books I’ve read in a very long time!

[ Ian Urbina. The Outlaw Ocean. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2019) ]