A Renegade Trawler, Hunted for 10,000 Miles by Vigilantes

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/world/a-renegade-trawler-hunted-for-10000-miles-by-vigilantes.html?_r=0

by denzil_correa • 11 years ago

295 103 11 years ago

nytimes.com

na85• 11 years ago

Well, there's my daily dose of "my life is boring by comparison".

toomuchtodo3• 11 years ago

Plenty of projects like that if you want to a) make the world a better place and b) seek adventure

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke

molsongolden• 11 years ago

Funding is the difficult part.

WalterGR3• 11 years ago

    Plenty of projects like that if you want to a) make the world
    a better place and b) seek adventure

Do you have any specific recommendations or suggestions on places to start, for helping existing projects?

Lately I've been considering finding something that combines both A and B...

frandroid• 11 years ago

This is the same writer, Ian Urbina, as the Sea Slaves story that also made the HN homepage yesterday. He's been writing a number of sea stories that look fascinating: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/u...

Looking further back into his archive, he also writes about tech, and racism.

mattdotc2• 11 years ago

As you have correctly noted, this piece is another entry in The Outlaw Ocean series:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/24/world/the-outl...

alexqgb2• 11 years ago

Needless to say, advocates for the shipping industry aren't happy about this kind of coverage. http://gcaptain.com/maritime-industry-advocates-slam-the-new...

zippzom• 11 years ago

This series is really good. The fact that the nytimes is bleeding money while still producing content of this quality is a sad state of affairs. Must be a better way to monetize this stuff.

guelo• 11 years ago

I don't think they're bleeding money. They've been operating on slim margins but they are considered to be one of the few old media companies to be successfully transitioning to digital.

wxs• 11 years ago

I agree that this series is great and I hope we can support more content like it!

I don't agree that the NY Times is bleeding money though, it's a rare bright spot in publishing AFAIK. They seem to run a profit every year, though their revenue does not appear to be growing[1].

[1] see financials here: http://investors.nytco.com/files/doc_financials/annual/2014/...

djloche2• 11 years ago

It seems like they're aggressively paying down debts and resolving union related costs. Based on their quarterly reports they seem to be doing okay in terms of cash on balance sheet and revenue vs costs of production. Their major concern long term is still valid - 74% of their revenue comes from print advertising. They need to significantly grow the digital side of their business, and reduce their overall costs.

mattdotc2• 11 years ago

It would also be nice if people would re-think their mental model about where content comes from and who pays for it. I hear about so many people blocking ads and whatnot - and I understand why - but you don't really see these same people evangelize subscriptions or otherwise supporting these places.

Of course, ad blocking is only one aspect to lower digital advertising revenues, but so many people complain about paywalls and whatnot, yet nobody seems to have any good solutions.

Until we have a good solution, and people get over their entitlement to free (as in beer) media, outlets like the NYT and others will continue to precariously wobble near the tipping point of print's demise (and the revenue with it).

morsch• 11 years ago

One reason why so few people are willing to pay for good content is that there is so much of it. If the NYT goes goes broke and stops publishing, or puts their stuff behind a paywall and consequently goes broke and stops publishing, people don't care, because there's dozens and dozens of other publications with the same quality competing for their attention. Along with, of course, a whole internet full of click-bait, zero research garbage, but that is sort-of beside the point: there is free quality journalism to be had elsewhere, in such seeming abundance that I can't say that this carefree attitude by readers is short-sighted.

Another thing is that the manner in which journalism is consumed has changed fundamentally: we pick and chose individual articles from a variety of sources instead of reading or skimming through one publisher's entire newspaper for any given day. In other words, it's not even the NYT that's competing for attention with other publishers, it's any given article that's competing for attention with any other article.

It's possible that I'm not giving the NYT and their ilk enough credit: while I think there's no debating there's an overabundance of thoughtful, well-written long- (and short-) form content out there -- more of it alone on HN that I'd have to quit my job to read it all -- I'm open to the suggestion that much of it is still different from what newspapers like the NYT do, or strive to do, particularly in terms of dedicated research and fact-checking.

If that's the case, and there remains a demand for this kind of content as opposed to content that's "just" well-written and thoughtful, maybe at some point before it's gone it'll be rare enough that people will start paying for it.

aikah2• 11 years ago

I know nothing about sea or sailing of even fishing but this article was just stunning. That is the kind of journalism i'm ready to pay for.

scottyallen2• 11 years ago

I agree - the autoplaying videos weaved into the text was really beautiful.

bittercynic• 11 years ago

Sarcasm?

nickbauman• 11 years ago

Generally autoplaying anything for me is a no-no. If there's a setting to stop it, I have it set in advance.

jacquesm• 11 years ago

I love it when the house gets woken up in the middle of the night because I scroll down on a page.

PhasmaFelis• 11 years ago

For bonus fun, if you try to stop the video, it starts again as soon as you scroll any amount. Great job, guys!

umanwizard• 11 years ago

Talk is cheap -- did you sign up for an NYT subscription?

aikah2• 11 years ago

Just found out they are having a summer sale , 50% off that ends today , so that's definitely the right time to sign up.

moron4hire• 11 years ago

I would if I knew it would remove the advertisements from the site.

arjie5• 11 years ago

I tried, but they have a form that claimed it works but does not actually work for my American Express card. I cleared it all and typed it in looking at my card and it claimed my CVV was invalid.

It worked with another card.

I'm home and ill today so I can't do any actual work which is why I had time for this charade. Any other day I would have simply hit the back button and ignored them.

Talk _is_ cheap. A broken billing form? Now that is costly.

wavefunction• 11 years ago

Great pieces like this are offset by a large margin by their pandering/propaganda for things like the Surveillance State and the invasion of Iraq. It's not enough to get me to patronize them.

lazyjones• 11 years ago

It's also the kind of environmental activism I'm willing to donate for (i.e. Sea Shepherd).

aerique• 11 years ago

http://www.seashepherd.org/support-us/

mullen2• 11 years ago

Illegal fishing is a global business estimated at $10 billion in annual sales, and one that is thriving as improved technology has enabled fishing vessels to plunder the oceans with greater efficiency.

Not sound like a First-Worlder, but so much environmental destruction by sweeping the seas clean of life and helping destroy the planet for so little money. I would have guessed that illegal fishing netted (No pun intended) a lot more than that.

richdougherty• 11 years ago

Illegal fishing is bad, but it's probably dwarfed by the environmental impact of legal fishing.

Interesting discussion about governance over the oceans: http://www.economist.com/news/international/21596990-humans-...

mullen2• 11 years ago

Yes, but legal fishing can be regulated. We can setup manageable and productive fisheries that not only can sustain populations but also continue to reproduce and be healthy. With illegal fishing, we can't do that.

sliverstorm2• 11 years ago

Same deal with trees. As far as I understand, the trees holding back the advance of the Sahara are being cut down for cooking firewood, and the rainforests are being deforested for ordinary farmland.

x0054• 11 years ago

This is in general true about most criminal activity. Most crimes net very little profit.

coldtea• 11 years ago

Except white collar and government crime, from the Wall Street deregulation abuses to colonialism. Those net trillions....

TeMPOraL• 11 years ago

That sounds good. The less profit there is in illegal activities, the less reasons there are to undertake them. I just hope it's general unprofitability and not the fierce competition bringing down margins.

jonahx2• 11 years ago

The 4 month campaign must have been really expensive. Is there a reason they didn't just forcibly board the boat with a swat type team from helicopters, or something similar?

beamatronic• 11 years ago

They are a non-governmental organization (NGO) and don't have any legal authority.

jonahx2• 11 years ago

Ah, in that case, why is the ship even running from them?

mcguire• 11 years ago

They also don't actually have any weapons.

140am• 11 years ago

Ian Urbina's "The Outlaw Ocean" serie is quite the fascinating and nicely researched read - http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/24/world/the-outl...

arjie5• 11 years ago

These are the same folks who also used to own the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MY_Ady_Gil which was famously destroyed in a collision with a whaling ship. It's interesting to read internet comments describing these incidents.

The universal opinion on the Internet at the time blamed the Ady Gil for being reckless. I wonder what people would be saying if the Bob Barker hadn't been able to handle the storm.

hyperion2010• 11 years ago

Off topic, but NYT seems to be breaking things again. I have media.autoplay.enable set to false, yet all the videos on this article still autoplay. Better yet, if I change from true to false and then reload the page and scroll down firefox crashes when I reach the first video. edit: ye old error.

console.error: [CustomizableUI] Custom widget with id loop-button does not return a valid node Segmentation fault

mach5• 11 years ago

also annoying was that the video would autoplay as you scrolled, even if you specifically paused it

readams• 11 years ago

Every time you scroll it starts the videos. Even if you stop them it restarts them. And there were a fuckload of them. Very irritating. Luckily you can mute the tab.

lemevi2• 11 years ago

The videos on that page use JavaScript and scrolling to control when a video plays. The setting you are referring to probably controls autoplay options set from HTML. I doubt any kind of setting in Firefox would disable JavaScript controlling videos as that would break custom controls.

function_seven• 11 years ago

I doubt any kind of setting in Firefox would disable JavaScript controlling videos as that would break custom controls.

True, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I usually prefer the default controls on HTML5 video players to whatever the site wants to cook up. Somewhat similar to scroll bars and form elements. Native, please.

caf• 11 years ago

In theory it might be possible to only allow javascript running due to a mouse or keyboard event to control videos.

pretty_bubbles• 11 years ago

It works for me. If it happens every time, I suggest filing a bug at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?format=guided

bruceb• 11 years ago

AP tracks slave boats to Papua New Guinea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9965296

WalterGR3• 11 years ago

From the article: "Numerous other agencies — including Interpol, the United Nations and the U.S. State and Defense departments — told the AP they don't have the authority to get involved."

So Interpol can get involved in illegal fishing but not human slavery? That's strange.

dankohn1• 11 years ago

This is an amazing article, that is crying out for a big budget feature film. I wonder whether legalizing efforts like this would justify bringing back Letters of Marque: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque

fleitz• 11 years ago

I bet if they did Blackwater would rebrand back to Blackwater.

kw71• 11 years ago

The Interpol Purple Notice explains that the ship was previously sailing under the Mongolian flag. Isn't Mongolia a landlocked country? Does it have any navigable routes to the oceans? Where are Mongolia's ports?

jackgavigan• 11 years ago

Any country can issue ship registrations, even landlocked ones. For a while, Sea Shepherd's vessels sailed under the flag of the Iroquois Nation.

gambiting• 11 years ago

A country does not have to have a connection to the sea to own ships. Czech Republic and Slovakia both own ships that sail under their own flags despite being landlocked. They are usually stationed in Polish or German ports.

jchomali• 11 years ago

Great article!

Ntrails• 11 years ago

Sorry for off topic...

Is there a way to allow myself to select text on this website? I find it hard to read on screens without and it's bugging the hell out of me.

A Renegade Trawler, Hunted for 10,000 Miles by Vigilantes

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