A four-year investigation from The Outlaw Ocean Project shows that workers of a Chinese distant-water squid fleet are often held captive in inhumane conditions on Chinese fishing ships. Migrant workers from the Philippines and Indonesia comprise most of the crew aboard.
The U.S. government imports hundreds of millions of dollars of seafood packaged in China by Uyghurs and North Koreans. That’s a violation of major import bans.
In recent decades, working aggressively to expand its might, China has transformed itself into the world’s seafood superpower. This pre-eminence has come at a grave human and environmental cost.
This story was produced by the Outlaw Ocean Project, a nonprofit journalism organization in Washington. This article was reported and written by Ian Urbina, Joe Galvin, Maya Martin, Susan Ryan, Daniel Murphy and Austin Brush, with support from the Pulitzer Center.
Chinese fishing vessels stay at sea for years at a time, forcing their crews to confront severe malnutrition. Americans who eat seafood are implicated too.