Ocean Imbalance of People-Planet-Profits - Talking with Ian Urbina of #TheOutlawOcean

JJ Walsh 0:01

Hi, good morning everyone and welcome. This is seek sustainable Japan. I'm JJ Walsh here in Hiroshima. And today I have the honor and pleasure of talking with Ian Urbina, who is an amazing journalist, passionate and focused on our oceans and reporting from the amazing stories that never get covered. Thank you so much for joining in.

Ian Urbina 0:26

Thank you for having me.

JJ Walsh 0:28

Thank you so much again, for all the amazing work that you do. It is absolutely impossible to cover everything in one hour. But I'm really interested in talking about the stories from your amazing book, but also from your project, which have the most obvious and far reaching effects on Japan, and anywhere around the world. It's just incredible what you've been doing. Can you give us a little bit of background about how the outlaw ocean started? Through the New York Times? Was it at first?

Ian Urbina 2:37

Yes, I was for 17 years on staff at the New York Times. And I was an investigative journalist. And the I tended to write you know, series. The final series I worked on was called the outlaw ocean. And it was a look at the myriad crimes that occur at sea around the world. And that series was about eight stories, seven stories in the newspaper, one in the magazine. After that I took once that wound down I decided I wanted to stick with it. So I went back out to sea for two years with Fabio Nascimento, Brazilian videographer photographer produced the book.

Ian Urbina 3:24

And then I you know, I decided after the book that I still saw there being a lot of stories out there that I still wanted to get to, and not really a whole lot of journalism of a certain sort coming out of the space. So I decided to create a nonprofit news organization called the oil ocean project. And we are 24 months old and staff of eight folks based in I'm based in DC, but my staff are based all around the world. And we produce stories that we sell fund, and then we get them published in newspapers and magazines around the world.

And we also convert much of what we do into other mediums like podcast or animation or euro art or music as an additional way to get attention on the recording.

JJ Walsh 4:26

Yeah, absolutely incredible. And what I I really admire is you were talking about it was really hard to leave the New York Times and that stable income, but having a way to spread the journalistic stories across to a bigger audience was one of the reasons you started this nonprofit. Is that right?

Ian Urbina 4:50

Yeah, quite right. I mean, I sort of there were I love the New York Times and it was as a organization. I think really a decent and humane employer and one of the best producers of journalism in the profession, in my view, and I have nothing but good things to say about New York Times. At the same time I, I really wanted to do some things differently. I wanted to if I was going to work on a story for a year, I wanted to innovate in how it gets distributed, and ensure that more people, not just more people, but different people are able to consume it. And by different I mean, not just English language readers of The New York Times, but you know, Chinese readers, Spanish readers, French readers, German readers, Dutch readers, Japanese readers, and then not just these other languages, but also different age demographics. You know, I really thought that the profession of legacy outlets of print journalism, like the Washington Post, New York Times, etc, are a bit stodgy in how they disseminate their reporting, and they miss a lot of the younger audience.

And so I thought, I would do things differently, partially to get out a younger audience. And then also the third way was not just more people, in different countries, in different languages and younger people, but also people in a different way, you know, taking the journalism and, and accessing consumers of it more emotionally, through art, often as a precursor to the written word or video as a way to kind of tap into them. Not visceral, not rationally. Perhaps, but perhaps, but maybe instead, viscerally, you know, and so using music and an art, to grab their attention emotionally, and then hope that their curiosity kicks in, and then they click over to read the full story.

JJ Walsh 7:05

Yeah, absolutely. That integration with musicians, all the collaboration that you're doing around the world, animators, as well, using the footage, like you said, you have so much great footage from all your investigative journalism work around the world, and reusing the audio, but also reusing the video in new and creative ways with young creators. That's a really interesting way to spread news, which maybe most people they don't read newspapers, right? They don't go to read the news on official or legitimate news news websites anymore, right?

Ian Urbina 7:45

(Well) you think of a platform like Spotify, right? I am a huge consumer of music. And I, you know, I sooner listen to music, when I have free time than I do watch TV, or anything else. And so people go to that platform in the 10s of millions at any given moment. And they're consuming music.

And a lot of them are seeing things on their smartphone at the same time, sometimes connected to the artist who's playing that musician, that music. And so the thought here was, well, what if the music is great, and there's art that's paired with it, and the titling and the sound elements and the video are all pointing at the direction of this reporting without bludgeoning the sort of didactically bludgeoning the listener, so that it becomes a lesson plan, as opposed to, you know, an actual song.

I mean, you want it to still have the aesthetics of music, but you can sort of use it to ramp folks off of the music and elsewhere. And so that's what we do, and with considerable generosity and amazing creativity from musicians themselves, you know, it wouldn't work if musicians weren't so generous and creative and willing to take the plunge and give this a try and quite a lot have and it's worked really well.

JJ Walsh 9:15

That's awesome. And I was really happy to see Noam Chomsky remixed in new ways, and maybe I'll hear Noam Chomsky's talk in the club next time I go with my kids, you know, it's awesome.

Ian Urbina 9:32

Yeah, I mean, there's the Chomsky .. so I've known Chomsky for a long time, for many years, exclusively as a fan of his writings and thought and activism and, and then, in other ways, intellectually, you know, he became a source and I interacted with him as a journalist to him for many years and, and have just immense respect for him.

Ian Urbina: 10:00

You know, Opus and his career and his mind, and him as a person. He's just a deeply decent human being. And so it just struck me, you know, when I talked to my 18 year old, he'd never heard of Chomsky. And I thought, that's crazy. You know, this is like one of the most important intellectuals the last 50 years in linguistics and anthropology and ethics and geopolitics in activism. So I thought, you know, he's getting up in his ears. And wouldn't it be neat if the things we learned over the outlaw ocean music project, we maybe applied to Chomsky.

Ian Urbina: 10:31

So I asked his permission, worked with him a bit and collected a whole bunch of his audio, you know, interviews and speeches and stuff, and then recruited a bunch of musicians, almost all of them actually, from the outlaw ocean music project, who wanted to do more. And I said, Hey, I got this other project, you know, check this guy out, if you like him, most of them have, you know, new Chomsky. And so I thought this is a neat way to, to immortalize some of what Chomsky has said, and also, again, access a younger audience in that effort. So it's worked really great.

JJ Walsh: 11:07

That's great, very exciting, and something ongoing and renewed ways of revisiting these ideas and re reconnecting it to how people, young people, especially how they see the world how they connect to these stories, right?

Ian Urbina: 11:25

That's right. Yeah.

JJ Walsh: 11:27

One of the well, let's talk in general, one of the big overview articles that you did, was about saving the planet while ignoring two thirds of it. And I think this is, one of the big reasons you started this whole project in the first place is because it is two thirds of our planet, it is 50% of our oxygen, which a lot of people don't realize it is how we get 80% of all of our goods. It's such a place that we rely on and just take for granted. And don't talk about what's actually happening on the oceans. Right?

Ian Urbina: 12:06

Yeah, I mean, I think you summed it up well, I would add, it is a place that more than 50 million people work. And yet, there's this dearth of knowledge and fluency and sense of urgency and ongoing reporting coming from out of there, you rarely hear stories from seafarers or about them.

Ian Urbina: 12:28

So to me, you know, it really feels like just a virgin beat, you know, journalistically, but I think from the specifically from the climate change, or the climate crisis perspective, it's also really striking that there isn't more attention paid, because if you look at the amount of dollars spent, or the amount of media minutes spent, or the amount of policy hours spent, on climate change, debate, climate change solutions.

And you compare how much of that is focused on land versus off land, it's completely skewed. You know, and for obvious reasons, we live on land or land creatures, you know, governments reside on land jurisdiction makes more sense on land, the High Seas is a different place. And but nonetheless, in terms of the problems of climate change in terms of the potential solutions for climate change, in terms of just just the untapped research happening out there. I think there's real, real need for more focus on the oceans.

And so that's that's that was the point of that op ed?

JJ Walsh: 13:52

Yeah, absolutely. And there's one thing which I think relates to us in Japan, the idea that whaling and whales and the ocean itself is a carbon capture. And so you don't think of whaling as being part of like you you said, in the past century of whaling 70 million acres, it equals burning 70 million acres of forest, you know, so we think about trees being carbon capture, like the the importance of the Amazon, which you also touch on, but we don't really think of the oceans importance in capturing carbon and whales themselves, you know, so this is definitely something connected to Japan and overfishing in general. Right.

Ian Urbina: 14:42

Yeah, I mean, I think quite Especially that last point over fishing in general, you know, I don't want to fixate on whaling, per se. I know it's relevant locally. But I do think the larger point here is to say, well, you have a global problem of unsustainable fishing grounds.

Ian Urbina: 15:00

This is and not to mention plastic pollution and sort of deoxy toxification of the oceans. So the health of this biosphere and marine life in general, be they whales, or, you know, kelp forests, or what have you, you know, is actually very closely intertwined with the fate of the planet vis a vis, the climate crisis, because the carbon capture of whales or many other species is massive, and really overlooked. So you think about things like this debate about seabed mining.

So seabed mining is sort of the front edge of innovation, when it comes to accessing key precious metals that are likely going to be important for the solar panels in the long life batteries that we hope will help us solve climate change.

Great, okay. But the problem with seabed mining is that, you know, you're down there searching with these huge industrial machines, trying to grab at these manganese nodules, these, these rocks that have all these precious metals in them, and industrially pumped them up to the surface so they can be mined so that we can make these batteries and hopefully it will save the planet.

The problem is, while you're mining them, you're overturning the sea floor in a way that is crushing all sorts of carbon capture species and releasing carbon at the same time. And so, you know, the the the question that scientists need to ask and answer is, are you doing more harm than good, you know, so in the process of trying to create long lasting batteries, so as to wean ourselves from our addiction to fossil fuels are we actually like releasing more carbon that's accelerating, the very problem we're trying to solve?

These questions really need to be asked and answered more aggressively. And at sea, they're often overlooked, because it's so far off and so opaque, and they're very few people out there. And research is expensive and difficult to do. And so we don't often think enough about the carbon emission consequences of all sorts of sea activities, whether it's whaling, or overfishing, or seabed mining, or you name it.

JJ Walsh: 17:22

You talk about this in the book quite a lot that people have this impression. Like I said, before, I've taken it for granted, right. And it's also something people just assume will always be there. And we'll always absorb whatever damage we put into it, or do to it or take from it. But this is is really not true.

And we're seeing as we have more accountability, and more groups, like you're working with, like Greenpeace or Sea Shepherd, you wind down in a submarine to see a reef in Brazil. And it was a big deal, getting permission to even go and look at the reef to show the world that this reef even existed. So what you're talking about this next frontier, about protecting something people can't even see or imagine. That's another huge hurdle coming up right now. Right?

Ian Urbina: 18:23

Yeah, I mean, you summed it up? Well, I think, if the oceans are the last frontier, then the ocean floor are the frontier beyond that. And when you think about vulnerable and distant and relatively unplaced, and thus, unprotected realms, you don't get much better than the ocean floor, you know. And there's a lot of activity happening out there on the ocean floor, bottom trawling and, and cable internet cable laying, and, and bio prospecting by big pharmaceutical firms that are looking for, you know, some obscure sponge that will solve COVID, or cancer or what have you. There's a lot of things happening out there. And the ability to actually make sure those things aren't doing more harm than good, is limited by the barriers of governance. And those barriers are many, one, the sheer distance, you know, to get out there, that costs a lot of money.

Ian Urbina: 19:22

A lot of Most countries don't have that money to put patrols out there and then have a sub and then go down. And so when a company comes along and says, you know, not to beat up on Exxon, but let's say it's Exxon, you know, a big oil and gas company says to a big government like Brazil, hey, we want to offer you a lot of money at a time when you're cash strapped to for you to allow us to go out their way offshore to the sea floor, so that we can extract fill in the blank, whatever it is, okay, is that okay with you?

Ian Urbina: 19:52

And the government says, Hmm, we need the money, but we're not really sure if that's safe. Is that safe, and the guys from Exxon Say, yeah, it's safe, don't worry about it. We can even show you our reports that show it's safe. And it's you got nothing to worry about, we will bring in these scientists and they'll verify that it's safe. And we can do it safely and say it's safe, it's safe. It's safe, right?

Okay. The government of Brazil doesn't really have the resources to check whether Exxon is spinning them or not. And they don't have the finances to go out there and see independently, what are the unforeseen consequences of whatever that industrial activity is? And this is the story over and over, you know, this is the story whether it's, you know, industrial efforts on the sea floor, or it's, you know, industrial scale fishing off the coast of Somalia, or it's what have you.

Most of the world's coastal nations do not have the ability to actually exert true governance, even in their national waters, don't even mention high seas. So the consequence is industry is allowed to sort of do what they want out there. And sometimes, it's really not good for the rest of us.

JJ Walsh: 21:01

Yeah. One of the most heartbreaking stories from the book, which I think is such a great example of the illogic in the whole process is the Gambian fishmeal situation. And it just on so many levels, it reminded me of the book The Lorax, right, like you are completely destroying something that the locals rely on so much to try to solve a problem on another side of the world. It just, there's so many layers of people planet, and profits all in crisis, it just is an unbelievable story, can you walk us through it a bit?

Ian Urbina: 21:50

Sure. I mean, and it's a great comparison, it's, again, why I love art imitating life imitating art that, you know, Lorax is, you know, a work of genius, and completely on point. Um, so, historically, you know, there has been growing awareness of the fact that the oceans are being depleted, and to differing degrees for different species in different places. They're running out of fish, because industrial fishing is just too good at his job, and climate change and other things.

So one of the smart ideas that emerged historically was, well, if we're going to eat this stuff, why don't we grow it on our own, rather than capturing it at sea, and that'll give the the marine life at sea a chance to flourish or replenish. So thus emerged fish farming, aquaculture, and agriculture is either on land big pools of you know, water, where you grow fish, or near shore pens, where you grow fish.

And it's like, you know, big, big, you know, industrial agriculture. It's like farms of cows or pigs, but they just happen to be fish. Right? Well, it seemed like a good idea because it would slow down wild caught fish capture, and it would increase protein protein production for growing populations around the world by growing these fish in a controlled way, okay, well, then, you know, it kind of got to good at its job.

Aquaculture, and it scaled up as so many things do in the globalized economy and big companies got involved and profit, huge profit margins got involved and efficiencies came into play. And so not unlike the history of cattle, pigs, and chickens, you know, when you started growing, becoming huge factory farms as opposed to Mom and Pop farms, the same sort of problems began to emerge with fish farming, you had a problem of waste.

So massive quantities, when you when you got so big of waste product that had major pollution concerns, you had a problem of the market incentive to speed up the fattening of the product, in this case, fish but same thing with trying to fatten up chickens and pigs and cows use hormones and, and so all of a sudden, you are using huge amounts of hormones and supplements to try to fatten up and keep healthy. The fish that were in these pens on land or offshore, okay, the fattening up of the fish and the race to do that meant you got to feed them a lot of protein and that costs and so the industry said how can we control the cost of feeding these fish?

How can we get them high protein food so they get fat faster, we can put them on the market faster. For a while they're using soy, you know, but then the price of soy went up too high and so they shifted largely to fishmeal. fishmeal is defined as what it is, is it's why Capture fish that so in other words fish you catch at sea that are then in massive quantities ground up, dried, cooked, and pelletized or powderized.

So you're taking major amounts of fish from the sea, a lot of them are, are too small or ugly or what have you. And they're not typically eaten by humans, but when you bring them in in large quantities and run them through the blender, it doesn't you know, it doesn't matter. It's just mush and then you dry the mush out and make it powder and pellets, and then you can feed that to your farm fish, salmon, cod shrimp, what have you stuff that there's a big market for

Okay, so this was the emergence of fishmeal presently on the planet. roughly 50% of all biomass pulled out of the oceans is turned into fishmeal. So if you pause in your Lomax sort of way, and step back for a second and recap, you are trying to slow down ocean depletion, you're trying to slow down the speed at which we are taking fish out of the ocean. So you began raising them over here on land. But then you want it to do that faster. So you began capturing ocean fish to feed the guys on land. And so now you have this massive international market of fish meal, feeding aquaculture.

And the very thing you created, which was meant to slow down ocean depletion is rapidly accelerating it. And so that's the sort of upside down story of fishmeal and specifically in places like West Africa, which has seen a huge boom. In these fisherman factories. You have a local kind of repercussion, which is they're not just taking the small fish that no one eats. They're taking fish that a lot of people eat, especially the local communities.

In the case of Gambia, it's a fish called the bongo fish, which was sort of a key staple in the Gambian diet, which is now getting in those are Bongo fish on your screen, which is now getting diverted into the fishmeal factories to be palletized and shipped abroad, export. And the bomba fish is not making it to the local tables or the local mounds. They're priced out of the market. And you have a serious protein problem occurring in these West African countries because there's this huge industry. So it's just you know, it's really a problematic situation.

JJ Walsh: 27:16

It is, it's crazy. And then one of the things that I found really interesting as well, is how you're taking a livelihood away from a lot of the local women. And the local women were the fishmongers in this area, and they would support their families and communities. And there's so few women in your book, there's so few women in the whole fishing industry in a lot of the things that you talk about. But this one really struck me really hard, like once you take away the local women's livelihood, and they support so many people, that's another horrible knock on effect of this whole system. Right?

Ian Urbina: 28:00

Yeah, no, I mean, I think there are, if you look at that story in Gambia, it's a story about the upside down nature of a globalized industrial economy for a product that's backwards, you know, from an environmental standpoint.

It's also a story about social decay in the sense that, you know, there's a lot of research that says, especially in developing world, but practically everywhere, women $1 spent on in a woman's pocket versus dollar spent in a man's pocket has very different repercussions for the family, structuring for society. And the just, as you said, the table top markets that lie in the coast of West Africa, where all the fish are sold and clean and whatnot, is almost entirely women. And so, in caving in that market, you are caving entire family structures. So that was really, from a development standpoint, really problematic.

You also had another story which was about political instability. So you had a place like Gambia, which was coming out of many years of, of a repressive government that had a new regime, new government in power. There's a lot of hope about the pro democracy sort of pro liberal rights have this new batch of characters in the government. And you have real hope from a lot of younger Gambians, that this is their moment you know, finally their country is going to get on track. And so, some of those young Gambians begin coalescing around an environmental movement that is raising questions to their government about why have you guys given all these rights to foreign vessels, and also there are these factories here that are dumping serious waste into our lagoons and killing everything around and they're also emitting this, this, this smell from cook fishmeal, smells awesome, awful. And so they're often the factories are right on the coast. And for miles around boiling ground up fish, that stench is crushing the resort industry.

So, the tourism industry which is one of the few sources of income in coastal gunjur, coastal Gambia, was cratering because they had cut these deals with these foreign factories which are during fishmeal production. So that young folk are saying, this is terrible, this is not in our interest, you should not be cutting deals with these guys, and you're not even policing them all. Because here they are dumping stuff in our lagoons. And all of a sudden, the government says, whoa, back up, you know, you guys like this is, you know, your kids back up, let the adults handle this, we signed the deal with those guys. And you don't need to know anything more go home.

And the young activists were not willing to to take the streets to start protesting. And all of a sudden the secret police of the old regime are back on the streets, you know, arresting folks without cause and visiting them at night and disappearing people. So you have a political stability issue, which is very common look at US history in Latin America. And it's the same story over and over where, you know, the government is worried about scaring away foreign capital, and a bunch of activist start banging on the government for cutting deals with foreign capital. And all of a sudden, the government starts repressing its own population to protect those foreign interests. And that's what's happening in Gambia over the fishmeal industry.

JJ Walsh: 31:19

It's, it's such a warning sign. It's like I see sirens, you know, warning warning. And you you talk about this in the book, this is gonna lead to a geopolitical crisis. This is going to lead to migration, whenever we have corporate interests, profit, short term profit seeking anywhere around the world, it destabilizes the local communities and makes people desperate, they become migrants. And that's another huge topic that you cover, right?

Ian Urbina: 31:57

Yeah, I mean, and, and I want to be careful not to, to, on my own accord, use a paint brush that's too broad, you know, broad brushstroke things too much. So the flip side, I don't want to demonize foreign capital across the board.

Because truth is Gambia or fill in any nation that's developing needs, and often is greatly benefited by those very players, that are foreign investors and companies and industries that are willing to come in and take a chance on that country and set up a an industry and employ people and pay the taxes and often pay labor less than in their home country, but nonetheless pay those folks in the developing country more than they otherwise be paid.

And so often, there are scenarios where the foreign capital relationship is beneficial to the locals it's not always wrong in my personal view, but there are a lot of risks you know, like these countries don't have this often don't have the experience don't have the staff the lawyers to vet the contracts and and the inspectors to do the check after the contracts been signed and all these things to make sure that they don't get bamboozled into a bum deal, you know.

And and this is this is the problem with a lot of these industries in the fishmeal industry and Gambia, for sure, is an example where that industry has not largely been to the benefit, there was all sorts of promises. Hey look, if you let us come in and build this factory and gunjur, Gambia, [A] we're gonna employ a lot of Gambians. [B] we're gonna pay big tax dollars, and you guys are gonna do well, and you can hire more nurses and teachers and build some bridges and that sort of thing. [C] we're gonna pave this road from here to there that you need so that every time there's a heavy rain, kids don't, you know, get blocked from school, it's going to be good, it's going to be good for you. And so like, Okay, that sounds great.

You know, the factory comes along the road never gets paid, the tax basis is minimal. The number of people employed is like 1/10 of what they promised, you know, these are the sorts of things and then the things already been signed, and off we go. And it's a little late to wind it back. And if you do wind it back, then the consultants and the lawyers are saying Hey, Mr. President, Gambian, be careful because if you come down too hard on this industry, foreign capital writ large, you're gonna get a reputation as you know, one of these leftists who's who's like, anti foreign capital, and no one's gonna be willing to invest in you and the World Bank and these folks are gonna kind of backpedal away from you.

And then we're going to be a pariah. And no one will have no money coming into the country investing in new industries. So be careful. So it's a you know, I feel for the Gambian prison that he or she is in a really tough position. But But I just think like we've seen this sort of relationship play out a bunch of times. And, and I do think, you know, this is why journalism in some ways is really important. Not just mine, plenty of others, to really lay stuff out in a predictive explanatory rigorous fashion so that you know those those policymakers, secret police, you know, it you know cup fishmeal companies can be held to account for these sorts of problems.

JJ Walsh: 35:16

Absolutely, the first step is knowing about it, and having journalists cover it as balanced as possible. And talk about all the different parts of the story, not just one part of the story. Sure, outside investment can be a great thing, but somebody needs to be checking that it is actually a good thing for the local people. And it has their interests at heart, right. Another story which I found similar parallels was about Palau, another very small country. And definitely, it's so tempting to take a lot of outside money, but they have been very good at protecting their waters. But in the book, you write, but it's, it's not just up to them, right? They can't be one small country only trying to do this, they just don't have the resources to police their waters all the time to really conserve and take care of, of the marine life and the oceans around their area. It's really it goes back to that Commons and the public. And there is no clear law out there. Amazing.

Ian Urbina: 36:35

Yeah, I mean, I think Palau is a very inspiring story, in the sense that here, you have an island nation that has the land space of Philadelphia, and the sea space of France, has it when we were reporting it, they had one patrol vessel 17 guys that worked it. And so they had this Herculean task of protecting their waters, huge number of foreign vessels in the neighborhood that routinely are coming in. And they had a president who was really aggressive on protecting on sort of writing policy and law and giving finances to patrols, etc. And working with a lot of partners, the US, Australia, others to sort of try to do that.

And they created a huge marine protected area where industrial activity was allowed to happen. So amazing. In a sort of David and Goliath sort of way, the flip side is the problem of modern political structures is that the policies, even the good ones, that get put in place by one leader can quickly be removed by the next, you know, and that's a story that we're working on, which is taking a look at a bunch of places around the world where they have had really impressive MPAs marine protected areas, put in place.

Ones that are actually respectful of the local fishers who need employment and need sustenance, etc. But in any case, and then that those MPAs get quietly unfolded, because of key industry players and countries applying pressure over time helping elect a new person, and that new person comes in, in return, they get, hey, let's fall back that MPA, let's do something up over here. Let's do that. And that, let's give us a license so that we can come in, you know, etc, etc. And that's happening in a bunch of places right now to a worsening degree. And I think that's again, another story that the short sighted nature of policymakers and the short, short sighted nature of journalists, you move on think, okay, I told that story PALAU is a good news story, come back in five years, it might be a bad news story. And you really have to keep coming back and saying how things going now? Are we going forward? We're going backwards, let me write about it.

JJ Walsh: 39:01

Absolutely for anything with sustainability in mind, and we all want to survive into the future. So sustainability is important. And you have to reassess, you have to keep keep an eye on it. You know, you can't just say, Oh, we've done this, this is perfect. Never have to look at it again. Right. That whole thing about monitoring, I think, is really interesting connection to how Obama started thinking about ocean conservation and even mapping of the waters around America, which would be the biggest area in the world. Right? And then how the next President to get into power, just reverse that completely. And there was also a lot of pushback from corporate interests, because once you start even laying out what the size is, that leads to regulation and one of the The things which is the common element of your your book and all your stories is the outlaw oceans, there are no real rules on the open seas, right?

Ian Urbina: 40:11

Yeah, no, I think you summed it up well. I do think, you know, step one is seeing step two is, is, isn't is is enforcement, right. And so if you don't have the ability to see, ie map, the space, say, of us territorial waters, which is, as you said, you know, double the size, I think of the country, globally.

Then you have no method really, of policing them and regulating them. And those players, be they key fishing industry players, or oil and gas, or who have whoever, who are, who have figured out how to navigate the current system, have no interest in seeing, it's changed, whether because even just new regulations, much less stricter resolutions are bad for them. So they put, you know, a good amount of money behind their lobbyists to slow that down resist that, you know, we don't know, we don't really need maps, because maps are the first step toward regulation. And regulation is not good for our clients. And that that's, that's the story of the mapping.

And those are territorial waters, the story of the lack of eyes on of transparency of accountability, from transparency, with regard to the high seas, international waters, is in some ways, the same outcome, but a different path there. And the story of the High Seas is the sort of story of the tragedy of the commons, you know, that is a space that belongs to everyone to no one. And it has a is a space that you're, you know, sure, in jurisprudence in the history of law that surrounds it. And in the, in the culture, that sort of also connects to it, there is a protection for freedom, and a default skepticism towards the imposition of rules, more so than the opposite.

Which is the same more so than at default and inclination toward protecting first and giving freedom second, it's the other way around on the high seas. Largely because it's meant to be you know, Mare Liberum, the free seas you know. Sort of this open space that no one can lay rules on, so that everyone can use collectively. You know, and and you can transport your goods without you know any one country be it the US or the Soviets or the Chinese or the Gambians whoever it is on the high seas, they can't block your ship from moving through that space. That was the motivation. But the consequence of that motivation has been that, you know, there really isn't great enforcement of what few rules there are out there.

JJ Walsh: 43:11

It's, it's overwhelming, right? Like, how do you win? I've been prepping for this interview for a week reading all your book and listening to your podcasts. And I've had trouble sleeping. So how, how do you go forward as a journalist and keep an eye on exposing all of these horrible stories? Talk about how you keep your mental health and emotional health?

Ian Urbina: 43:40

Do I, is the question. Yeah, I'm not sure let's first for the sake of discussion, assume that I do. But that's an open question. No, I mean, I think one thing is, how do you keep your morale from sinking? And the other is? How do you ensure that you don't get pulled in too many directions? Both of those are mental challenges, but they're distinct. On the morale point, I try not to think of the war writ large. I just try to focus on individual battles. I assume the war, whatever, that's a war over the war over trying to do better by way of the the ocean and the people out there.

If that's a meta war, then you know, I can't see that high and it's ongoing and, but the individual battles, you know, this week, it's ocean plastic next week, it's sea slavery, week after that it's overfishing and fishmeal. And then its arms trafficking and murder with impunity. You just sort of you view these individual crises and categories of crime as individual battles and there are lots of good soldiers fighting the good fight in those battles.

And you try to say okay, we're gonna work on a story and we're just going to focus on that story now knowing it's not all the stories it's not the war writ large. It's just one battle and many, and we're gonna see what good we can actually had to explaining. Throwing a lot of harsh, but fair light on the issue and trying to get people to care, you know. So that's the morale thing. Well, I mean, that's, well, that's the focus thing.

The morale thing is, yeah, no, that's morale, you know, just just don't think about the war, just focus on battles and realize there's a lot of, you know, wins and losses and, and all you can do is really channel your sense of frustration and indignation into trying to do even better on that particular story.

You know, okay, let's, if you're so pissed off, get up an hour early and work extra on the story. I mean, that's like, a little voice in my head is like, this is so bad. So then I'm like, Okay, well, maybe I'll get up a little bit earlier and work a little bit harder on that story. So it can be a little bit better. And maybe I do my part a little more. So that's, that's my little simplistic method.

JJ Walsh: 45:54

Now, you know, you come with a anthropologic background. And I, I see that when I read your stories, you you have a real understanding of the human experience. And I think it's, it's really engaging as a reader or someone watching your videos or your reports. It's, it's kind of a lost part of a lot of these stories, right. The other the migrants seem very disassociated with my life was when people feel right. The other countries where this is happening out there in the big open ocean, where this is happening, it's very easy to disassociate. So I really appreciate that common thread of this is people just like us in your stories.

Ian Urbina: 46:46

Well, thank you. I mean, I hope you're right. I don't know if I do a good job, but it certainly is an aspiration. And that includes, to the extent possible, humanizing the culprits, you know, like even the people that are doing really bad things. I think if you're really good journalists, you try to humanize even the people doing bad things. And you don't apologize.. for their bad things. But I just think you can far more convincingly get people to engage with that crime and that abuse, if you don't dehumanize anyone in the mix.

And I just frankly, from a sociological point of view, do believe that many of the most evil forces are not like bad people. They're they're bad forces, sort of system level, collective inaction or misbehavior that writ large adds up to really egregious things. But it doesn't tend to all boil down to one person. There's a collection of so and in any case, I just, I appreciate that. That's how you experienced the pieces. The stories?

JJ Walsh: 48:06

Yeah, definitely. Um, it's, it's so easy to pass the buck, it seems in all the stories, right? There's so many middlemen who could take the blame, or even in something as simple as repossessing a boat. There are so many different actors involved, right. And so every story is so complicated.

've seen since you started in: 2019

Ian Urbina: 48:57

Yeah, well, progress. I think. One category of progress I've seen in the last eight years, is in the realm of journalism. There's a lot more institutional commitment to the space and the importance of producing stories about what's happening out there. And, and that's already a win, you know, and I see it in terms of hiring at big legacy outlets and funding and that sort of thing, which is fantastic.

I think it's also a point of progress that I'm seeing more stories that don't cover what's happening out there in as siloed a way.

So previously, I was very frustrated by most of the stories that would come out of the space or environmental stories exclusively. They were marine stories. Which is not to say the marine story isn't important, but I kind of wanted there to be more intersectional coverage that looked at the interplay between humans and, and the space and, and didn't forget one side or the other purely Seafarer focus stories or purely dolphin focus stories, you know.

I think it should always be human rights, labor and environment should all really make an appearance in the same story. And I'm seeing that more in stories, which is great. So in other words, you know, a story about illegal fishing also ponders, wait, are those trafficked 13 year old Cambodians that were doing the pulling of the nets? You know, like they're asking questions about what's going on on deck, not just below the waterline That's progress.

There's a lot more people in positions of policymaking be it in the US or the EU, or even within companies, you know, that are paying attention to this stuff for you know, whether they're doing much or whether they're doing enough where they're doing the right things. That's a different discussion, but, but there's a lot more attention and fluency from within those sectors. So I think all that's good.

JJ Walsh: 51:17

One other intersectionality story, which happened right, on Japan's coast, you were covering for NBC. Was it recently about the ghost ships? Can you tell us a bit about that story?

Ian Urbina: 51:34

Yeah, I mean, so this was a story that was a long investigation took almost a year, we did it with an organization called Global Fishing Watch, which is a really inspiring, savvy organization that specializes in using satellites and data to sort of better monitor the oceans. I'd worked with them in the past and and we at the Outlaw-Ocean-Project were interested in taking a look at two mysteries that seem to be vexing, and to exist on the Sea of Japan.

One was, why when squid stocks around the world are increasing in most places, not for good reasons, because largely because the predators that eat them are getting over-fished. But why is there one place in the world where squid stocks are crashing? You know, more than 70% decline in a decade, and that place is the Sea of Japan?

That was mystery #1, mystery #2 was, why are all these dead bodies of North Koreans washing up routinely on Japanese shores? Okay, the going answers to these questions where the reason the stock is declining is maybe climate change has caused the squid to shift and go to a different place. You know, and it was fairly speculative and maybe only half right. The other reason for the dead bodies was oh, you know, North Korea is a basket case. The sanctions have made matters worse. The leader of North Korea is Korea's applying even more pressure on a protein starved nation. They have dirty fuel broken engines, and you've got North Korean fishermen that are taking greater and greater risks. They're going further from shore. The boat, you know conks out, they die and the currents take those bodies and those ships to Japanese shores.

or: 1000

s is a big deal because after: 2017

And so we said look, let's go and ground truth, those dots on the map that you guys have brought to me. And let's get out on the water and let's actually lay eyes on these Chinese vessels as they head into North Korean waters. Let's just make sure we can verify it and let's just make it more real for people by filming it putting a drone up over it. That's what we did. We you know, I took a team, me and a videographer and rented our way onto a South Korean squid vessel went out to these certain coordinates that we're pretty sure that if we sat tight, we would see a bunch of these Chinese vessels quietly heading into North Korean waters, and waited.

And lo behold, you know, there they came, you know, and a whole line of them all dark while the lead vessel was lit was transponding. And the follow vessels, about nine or 10 of them were dark, and we tucked in behind the convoy and followed them, put a drone up, film them, etc, etc

Until one of the Chinese vessels got aggressive and started coming after us. And so we decided it was time to head home, or else we were going to get rammed and sunk. And so we now had proof. And so we went back and produced this really groundbreaking story for NBC News that revealed the largest illegal fishing fleet ever discovered. And we're actually working on a series now that will take us back to those waters to revisit that very issue, because we have some new, pretty troubling data on similar topics.

JJ Walsh: 55:55

Another example, where it's almost like a bullying, right, the the force with money and power and influence takes advantage and exploits, the workers or the the people that don't have those resources to fight back. And it ends up with human loss as well as environmental destruction. This is such an important theme throughout your book, right? This whole people planet profit, it all is integrated, underlying theme.

Ian Urbina: 56:37

Yeah, I mean, I think I do quite like stories that allow me to take a look at a demographic of people from whom you rarely hear. Talk about such a demographic, North Korean fishermen, I mean, crickets, you know, there are no stories that humanize that. That person, you know, who, you know, is living in a pretty tough situation. And so, what we revealed in that reporting was that those original theories as to this squid stock decline, and the dead bodies were not wrong, but the presence of these massive industrial vessels, and so many of them all lining the main fishing grounds in North Korean waters was causing a lot of these North Korean fishermen to have to go way further out to safely, you know, do what they needed to do. And that was putting them at really great risk. And that was a contributing factor to why so many of them were dying.

JJ Walsh: 57:41

That's just a powerful reminder that a lot of these problems are very far reaching, and not as simple cut and dried stories as we might think at first. Right.

Ian Urbina: 57:53

I agree.

JJ Walsh: 57:55

Well, we have a few more minutes. Can you tell us how people can find out more about the outlaw ocean?

Ian Urbina: 58:03

Sure. Yeah. I mean, so the outlaw ocean.com, is where we live. And all the stories we produce, are published there, as well as typically, in partner publications, in a bunch of countries. And again, we fund all our own stories. And the funding, and these are expensive, because going to see is slow and very costly.

And we fund largely through individuals that come and want to support it. And so they hit the donate button, and they, you know, give something small,or big, you know. But, it's what helps keep us growing and doing these stories. And we have a staff of eight, and we produce, you know, maybe four or five big investigations per year. And then we have a bunch of Art, sort of spin off projects, that take the journalism and, and try to push it out in other ways as well.

JJ Walsh: 59:04

And the whole music collaborative work is is another big part of the project. I just want to point out that your book, The Outlaw ocean is available in Japanese and many languages, how many languages all together?

Ian Urbina: 59:18

I should know this. I think it's nine, I think nine now or 10.

JJ Walsh: 59:23

Wow. And DiCaprio has bought the rights to the stories and might make something on Netflix sometimes is that right?

Ian Urbina: 59:32

So the net, so it's it's boring and copy of it. I mean, Netflix and DiCaprio bought the original option on the book. And then DiCaprio and his company moved from Netflix to another company. So the right he kept the rights and they went with him. And so they're still planning on making and working on something. But it's no longer with Netflix. It's with this other company which I'm not supposed to be talking about.

JJ Walsh: 59:58

But it might It might happen, something yes in movie form might happen.

Ian Urbina: 1:00:04

Yes, I'm Yeah, I try not to. It's such a slow moving and opaque beast that. And it seems so strange to me in many ways that I tend not to be super informed. My agent kind of runs all that. But yes, you know, they're still working on it. And there still seems to be forward momentum. And, you know, I would say we're several years away from a feature film, but whether it's going to be film or doc series or, or non scripted series, you know, it's unclear as of yet.

JJ Walsh: 1:00:39

I would also recommend everybody have a look at your YouTube channel. Because you can listen to a lot of the creative music projects. You can see the latest news clips, you've got so much content there. It's really worth going and having a look and definitely please support the Outlaw-Ocean. It's wonderful to support you guys as an independent news source, which can then spread the message and spread this amazing information wider. I think that's a really important part of what you do.

Ian Urbina: 1:01:15

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

JJ Walsh: 1:01:18

Thank you so much for joining and sharing some of your insights. It's wonderful to have you.

Ian Urbina: 1:01:22

My pleasure.

JJ Walsh: 1:01:24

Thanks, everyone for joining today. Take care. Have a nice, nice weekend in Japan. Take care. Thanks Ian.

Ian Urbina: 1:01:31

Bye bye