The Thunder thrived in this context. Interpol had issued a Purple Notice on the ship, the equivalent of adding it to a Most Wanted List, a status reserved for only four other ships in the world. The vessel had collected more than $76-million from illicit sales in the past decade, more than any other ship, according to agency estimates. 

Banned since 2006 from fishing in the Antarctic, the Thunder had been spotted there repeatedly in recent years. In 2015, there’s where the environmental organisation Sea Shepherd found them. Speaking through a translator, Peter Hammarstedt, captain of the Bob Barker, warned that the Thunder was banned from fishing in those waters and would be stopped.

It was the beginning of an extraordinary chase and the subject of the second episode of The Outlaw Ocean podcast, from CBC Podcasts and the LA Times. Listen to it here:

For 110 days and more than 10,000 nautical miles, across two seas and three oceans, the Bob Barker and a companion ship, both operated by Sea Shepherd, trailed the trawler — the three captains close enough to watch one another’s cigarette breaks and on-deck workout routines. In an epic game of cat-and-mouse, the ships manoeuvred through an obstacle course of giant ice floes, endured a cyclone-like storm, faced clashes between opposing crews and nearly collided in what became the longest pursuit of an illegal fishing vessel in history.

Chasing the Thunder: The Thunder sinking. (Photo: Simon Arger / Selase Kove-Seyram / Sea Shepherd)

As chronicled by The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit journalism organisation, whose reporter was on board the Bob Barker, the chase ended with a distress call from the Thunder. “We’re sinking,” the Thunder’s captain pleaded over the radio. The ships operated by Sea Shepherd rescued the crew and tried gathering evidence of its crimes before the ship sank to the bottom of the ocean. 

They took them to the nearest port officials in São Tomé and Príncipe, where the Thunder’s senior crew members were arrested. Three officers were charged with a variety of counts, including pollution, negligence and forgery. But losing the ship — and the evidence that went down with it, including the fish in the hold, onboard computers, various records and fishing equipment — makes prosecution more difficult, Interpol and Sea Shepherd officials acknowledged.

The second episode of The Outlaw Ocean podcast also discussed another notorious case related to illegal fishing that happened off the coast of North Korea. 

Washed up and flipped over wooden ghost ship with the propeller facing up, May 2019 in the Sea of Japan. (Photo: Fábio Nascimento)

The battered wooden “ghost boats” drift through the Sea of Japan for months, their only cargo the corpses of starved North Korean fishermen whose bodies have been reduced to skeletons. 

For years, the grisly phenomenon mystified Japanese police, whose best guess was that climate change pushed the squid population farther from North Korea, driving the country’s desperate fishermen dangerous distances from shore, where they become stranded and die from exposure.

But an investigation conducted by The Outlaw Ocean Project, based on satellite data, revealed what marine researchers now say is a more likely explanation: China is sending a previously invisible armada of industrial boats to illegally fish in North Korean waters, violently displacing smaller North Korean boats and spearheading a decline in once-abundant squid stocks of more than 70%.

The illegal Chinese fishing armada off North Korea at night in May 2019. (Photo: Fábio Nascimento)

The Chinese vessels — nearly 800 in 2019 — were in violation of  UN sanctions that forbid foreign fishing in North Korean waters. The sanctions, imposed in 2017 in response to the country’s nuclear tests, were intended to punish North Korea by not allowing it to sell fishing rights in its waters in exchange for valuable foreign currency.

The episode reveals what experts have called the largest known case of illegal fishing perpetrated by a single industrial fleet operating in another nation’s water. DM/OBP

Listen to Episode 1 here

Ian Urbina is the director of The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit journalism organisation based in Washington DC that focuses on environmental and human rights concerns at sea globally.