The Outlaw Ocean
Ratings2
Average rating4.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating4.5
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.
Reviews with the most likes.
Well-written, well-researched, and harrowing in prose and in content. A collection of issues interconnected through legal, sociopolitical, and personal story, Urbina has written a journalistic expose of the seas unlike anything I have ever seen. I was enthralled the whole time. I learned so much.
And, despite my usual misgivings on journalists who spill a lot of ink on their personal connections to the story as slowing the pace, I didn't feel like that at all about Urbina's personal asides. Incredible.
