Slaves at Sea: Investigation into Foreign-Chartered Commercial Fishing Vessels in New Zealand Waters

Life on a commercial fishing vessel is tough at the best of times.

But E. Benjamin Skinner says that some workers on foreign-chartered commercial fishing vessels in the seas off New Zealand operate under conditions of indentured servitude – and are essentially modern-day slaves.

Skinner is a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.

He’s published his findings in an article in Bloomberg Businessweek.

Skinner’s report is the culmination of a six-month investigation on three continents. His research included interviews with former workers aboard the Korean-flagged Melilla 201 and 203, as well as other ships.

After his article was published, one of his main sources, Yusril (not his real name), came under threat and had to go into hiding.

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Lisa Mullins: Working conditions on deep sea fishing vessels are tough but for some workers they are a form of slavery. That’s what Benjamin Skinner says. He’s a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. Skinner has been investigating conditions on foreign-chartered commercial fishing vessels that operate in New Zealand’s waters. For an article in Bloomberg Businessweek, he focused on two Korean-flagged vessels and their mostly Indonesian crew.

Benjamin Skinner: These were people from desperately poor fishing villages in central Java who had essentially rolled the dice, gone to recruiters knowing that working on deep-sea fishing vessels is dangerous work. What they didn’t understand was that they would be verbally and physically abused. They would also be sexually abused. The endemic sexual abuse was something I did not expect to find but found not only on those two vessels but others that I focused on for the piece. All of this was bound by contracts which looked like something out of the 19th century – they were indentured servitude contracts. These individuals could not walk away from their work for any reason unauthorized by the ships without incurring grave financial consequences that would essentially mean the financial ruin of their family.

Mullins: Now, describe for us the conditions that they did face. What would their lives be like?

Skinner: The basic reason why they were there was very dangerous work. They were hauling trawl nets and catching deep-sea species in New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone between 12 and 200 miles out. I documented at least two known deaths; I heard of others. There were grave injuries not only above deck when the nets were being hauled in but in the below deck factory where the fish were headed and gutted by hand. They were forced to work, in some cases, up to 30 hours on the Melilla ships. In other cases that have been documented among the foreign-chartered vessels in New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone, they are forced to work up to 53 hours. Ultimately, when you factor in the exploitative terms that the recruiters put on these workers combined with the hours, combined with fact that many of them never actually see most of their pay, they were being paid at best about a dollar an hour. Yusril, my main character, was being paid about 50 cents an hour.

Mullins: What was the nature of and even the impetus for the abuse that went on?

Skinner: The nature of the abuse was physical, was verbal, was sexual. The officers would crawl into bed at night with certain of the crew members who were weaker. These are all, of course, according to the allegations that were presented to me by the sources that I cite in the piece. These were instances of what I have come to realize is the all-encompassing nature of modern-day slavery. Slaves are those forced to work, held through fraud, under threat of violence for no pay beyond subsistence. When you get these individuals out in the deep and on the high seas, essentially they are entirely exploitable and disposable.

Mullins: So, tell us what transpired among these crew members.

Skinner: The New Zealand government has very good laws in terms of labor abuse and yet the labor officials that I spoke with, the Department of Labor officials in New Zealand reported that they had found nothing on these ships that amounted to human trafficking. They dismissed it as workplace bullying. They did not display, to me anyway, any understanding of the terms of these contracts which were essentially indentured servitude debt bondage. In one instance, there was a labor inspector who in my understanding was acting largely independently by the docks at Littleton. I saw him going in one night and I said, “Who are you?” He said, ‘You didn’t see me.” It turns out what he was doing was he was giving a fact sheet to the Melilla 203 crew. This fact sheet said to them – you have certain rights:- you have the right to be paid…to be paid a certain amount; you have the right not to be physically or sexually abused and you have the right to refuse to work without unjust consequences. They then took that sheet to the captain of the boat. The captain dismissed it and said get back to work, essentially, or we’ll send you back home and the recruiters will take their due. These men, believing that the New Zealand government would support them, walked off the ship en masse and within 3 weeks of this all but 22 had been sent home at the request of the fishing company.

Mullins: Sent back to Indonesia.

Skinner: Sent back to Indonesia. That has been the typical response of the New Zealand government. When there have been complaints from these crew members they will be sent home.

Mullins: Do they get paid?

Skinner: Those that got paid only got paid after they signed documents saying that they would not seek redress for human rights violations. All but 2 of them signed that document out of fear for their families, out of economic need and they got between $500 and $1,000 work for 6 months. One of the two was Yusril. When I asked him why, the last time I saw him which was on Skype, he pointed to his heart and said, “Dignity.”

Mullins: Distressing to learn that from those conditions we end up with fish on our dinner plates. How much of that fish ends up on our tables here in the United States?

Skinner: Our best estimates are that the most slavery-infected species coming out of New Zealand is squid. So, our estimate is that around 40% of New Zealand squid exports is caught on a vessel where we have at least one allegation of slave labor. So, if you are eating New Zealand squid, there is a fairly decent chance that it’s infected with slave labor; the other species would be Hoki, but the truth of the matter is we don’t know.

Mullins: Since you put your story online, there have been implications for…at least there’s one particular worker, Yusril, from Indonesia. What’s happened?

Skinner: About 36 hours after my piece went live, I got a text message from Yusril who is 28 years old – it’s in Indonesian and I quickly translated it on Google Translate and it said, “Strangers in my house. I’m very scared. Leaving with my family. Please help.” So I contacted the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta and they got a team on it right away. Yusril and his family are now in hiding. We are trying to get them comprehensive protection. The people who contacted them were the IMS agents, the recruiting agency named in the piece. I would like to send a message to them that, “You can come after me on this piece and I invite you to. My reporting is bulletproof, but it is despicable to go after a source and his 22 year old wife and their 1 year old son and send them into hiding. That’s about as low as anything that I’ve ever heard of in the corporate world.”

Mullins: Benjamin Skinner is a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. His article is in Bloomberg Businessweek. We’re going to make a link at theworld.org. Thanks Ben.

Skinner: Thank you.

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