A new estimate is more than 100,000 fatalities per year - or more than 300 a day, according to research produced by the Fish Safety Foundation and funded by the Pew Charitable Trust. The typical estimate has been around 32,000 casualties per year, making commercial fishing among the most dangerous professions on the planet. The number of deaths at sea - including killings - remain extremely hard to assess. It's still unclear who the victims were or why they were shot.Īn unknown number of similar killings take place each year - deckhands on the ship from which the video was shot later said they'd witnessed a similar slaughter a week before. There were at least four ships at the scene that day, but no law required any of the dozens of witnesses to report the killings - and no one did.Īuthorities learned of the killings only when the video turned up on a cellphone left in a taxi in Fiji in 2014. The case shows the challenge of prosecuting crimes on the high seas and the reason violence offshore often occurs with impunity. A 10-minute, slow-motion slaughter captured by a cellphone camera shows a group of unarmed men at sea, flailing in the water, shot and killed one by one, after which the culprits pose for celebratory selfies.įor human rights lawyers and ocean advocates, the only thing more shocking than the footage was the government inaction that followed.

Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.Ĭrimes like this don't often happen on land. The following story is based on material from the first episode of a new podcast series, The Outlaw Ocean, released by the CBC and the Los Angeles Times.

The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina