The Catch How Fishing Companies Reinvented Slavery and Plunder the Oceans

In November 2008, near Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean, a Korean ship came upon a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Tai Ching 21 was eerily silent. The lifeboat and three rafts were missing, and so were all 29 Taiwanese officers and Chinese, Indonesian, and Filipino crew who had been aboard. A quest to discover the identities of the lost men led New Zealand journalist Michael Field into a dark world of foreign-flagged vessels fishing in the ocean as far south as Antarctica. In The Catch he reveals what he discovered: horrifying examples of modern slavery in which men from poor countries are trapped on filthy, unsafe ships, treated brutally by captains and officers, and receive little or no pay. The fishing companies Field lays bare are ruthless. Their irresponsible and often illegal fishing practices are stripping the world’s seas and threatening the food supply of people everywhere, propelling us towards one of the environmental tragedies of our times. These stories play out on the waters of New Zealand and the Pacific, but the same practices are happening all over the world. Can we ignore the fates both of these men and the catch they fish for?

Michael Field has been a newspaper and agency reporter for 42 years, mostly covering the South Pacific. A former correspondent for Agence France-Presse, he now reports for Fairfax Media and is Pacific affairs commentator on Radio New Zealand’s Nine to Noon program. He is the author of Black Saturday: Killings in Samoa, Speight of Violence: Inside Fiji's 2000 Coup, and Swimming with Sharks: Tales from the South Pacific Frontline.