The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier Hardcover – 20 Aug. 2019

Really enjoyed the book, if you interested in anything to do with the ocean and piracy on the high seas you will love this book.

The Outlaw Ocean is based on a celebrated series of articles that Ian Urbina wrote for the New York Times on the struggles for human rights and environmental standards in the vast lawless expanses of the world’s seas.It is an impressive achievement, but also a deeply depressing one. As well as the continuing butchery of the planet’s whales, Urbina catalogues the environmental devastation of bottom trawling, the damage caused by the oil and gas industries, the risks arising from the destruction, “bleaching”, of the world’s corals, and the routine and brutal enslavement of seafarers, particularly fishermen, on the world’s ships and boats.There are some heartening descriptions of the work of activists, such as those of Stella Maris or Sea Shepherd, who strive to bring some measure of humanity to this brutal realm, and there are exciting descriptions of some of their operations. But, appositely enough, all these seem like drops in the ocean such is the scale of the both environmental and human rights challenges.Nevertheless, Urbina’s impressive work is an appalling indictment of this human rights and environmental carnage at sea that the world is collectively turning a blind eye to.Strongly recommended.

Ian Urbina is a journalist. This book contains a series of his reports about the Oceans and the law (or rather lack of it). He has spent several years investigating these topics and compiling this wide ranging book. The oceans are dangerous places and Ian himself has faced dangers while making these reports. Frequently there is no real authority fin these remote places and equally no one to police them even if any authority was clear. While the oceans are dangerous much of the danger here comes from those who work on it. Frequently they exploit both it and fellow humans.I enjoyed so much of this book. It would be tempting to go through it chapter by chapter. However that would simply spoil the book for other readers. For this review I will simply mention two or three of the chapters that I found particularly interesting.The book starts and ends with stories about the environmental action group Sea Shepherd. In the first one two Sea Shepherd boats are chasing a "wanted" fishing boat starting in the Antarctic and then going where the fishing boat runs too. Frankly it read quite like a thriller and was an excellent start. The second looks at their activities in 2016 trying to stop the Japanese whaling fleet despite there being an injunction against them - again an excellent story. However in these stories and the others in the book the author uses the context of the story to look at the more global issues as well as the specifics. He also generally manages to maintain a fairly even stance too although that is simply not possible in some cases. Few aspects of this are simply black or white - Ian draws this out very well in my opinion.An intriguing story in this book is about Women on Waves. The organisation has a small boat. They land in largely Catholic countries, collect women who want an abortion and sail until they are outside the 12 mile limit. This means that they are in international waters and so assisting women in having a medical abortion is not illegal. The boat has an Austrian flag and so that also allows activity that would potentially be illegal otherwise. This report allows the author to continue exploring the nature of "flags" of vessels including flags of convenience and the nature of maritime laws - a constant theme here. Broadening this out means the author considers the effect this behaviour - providing abortions - may have on the countries concerned by stimulating dialogue.I find it so hard to simply find one more interesting story in this collection. There are so many things covered by this book that I think I'll just make a few points of interest.• There are a number of stories about the sheer cruelty with which crew are treated. There are bizarre approaches to legality of what is done commercially and what is "allowed" by countries or turned a blind eye to.• The "good guys" can be very hard to identify sometimes. If we still continue to kill whales what should we do about whales who have learnt to strip long line catches as fishermen reel them in - the costs are significant.• What are the "economics" of stowaways - the costs to vessels can be high and that can lead to some troubling practices. How about the transporting of people arrested by boat rather than by plane - what might happen during extended sea voyages that could not happen any other way.• There is time with the "repo" men who try and get ships back for people who are owed money - fascinating.While maybe more than I intended to say when I started this review these points are simply a window into a fascinating book. There was not a single chapter that did not hold my attention."It also felt like time travel as I witnessed things - piracy, whaling, slavery, privateers - that I had previously assumed were safely locked in the past". In many ways this quote sums up this book for me.This book should certainly make us think. It would be all too easy to say that this is not our problem. However it is our actions that lead to the abuse of both oceans and the people who work or are forced to work on them. One of the points that the author makes very vividly is the fact that we cannot expect to buy cheap tins of "responsibly sourced" tuna fish without someone paying a high price. If the idea of this book interests you do read it - it is worthwhile.

This is one of the most amazing books I have read. It is the culmination of a huge amount of courageous, methodical and intelligent research and is shocking to the core. At the same time as being a gripping read it reveals the awfulness of events which are still going on and which I, like the author, had thought were confined to history. It also shows how modern technology has increased the stakes of both danger and environmental harm.To describe this as investigative journalism does not do it justice: this is total immersion by the author in a murky, dangerous and terrifying world which nearly cost him his life. I cannot imagine how he sustained the constant risks for so long, nor indeed how his family coped throughout. To employ an overused phrase, this really is a "must read".

Fascinating, gripping, eye-opening and disturbing.This collection of insights into the lawlessness and abuse which is rife on the high seas is engagingly written and really brings its various subjects to life.Covering piracy, theft, slavery and much, much more, the author took his life into his hands to bring these stories to life - and reports them so vividly you can almost taste the salt water.A riveting read.

A real life account by someone who is prepared to put his life on the line to expose the rogue world of international trawling fleets trashing the worlds oceans, combined with human rights abuses and exploitation of people working / being slaves in the maritime industry. A must read for anyone with an interest in marine conservation/ human rights.

Excellent book. A lot of hard work went into writing it. I would recommend it highly.

Informative, unbiased observations from a guy who's not afraid to get involved in the chase. It show the weakness of international maritime law together with the inability (or inaction) of developed countries to understand the scale of this worldwide illegal fishing problem.