The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier

"This book came out at around the same time as my first book, The Imperiled Ocean . They’re similar in some ways, but I would say Urbina’s book is much better than mine. Each chapter investigates a specific sector of the clandestine operations that take place out at sea. He delves into the many weird corners of this world, including illegal fishing, the oil and gas industry, pirates, smuggling, and human trafficking. Urbina must be an adrenaline junkie. He takes you to some dangerous and terrifying places. It’s an exceptional piece of literary journalism and reporting. There is no other book out there like this. Every single chapter is fantastic. Yes. The ‘out of sight, out of mind’ ocean blindness that I talked about makes the ocean a place that is prone to crime. More crime happens out there and less of it gets reported. It’s an ideal place for traffickers to move products and people and where refugees and migrants can slip past borders. This book contains a chapter about an activist in Mexico, where abortion was only recently decriminalized, who provides abortions out at sea. This is an example of how you can sidestep the laws that apply on land in order to help people. The ocean is a place that facilitates good and bad—though mostly bad—illegal activities. There are so many examples. One thing that shocked me recently was a story in The Brilliant Abyss about the industry of shipping cattle from country to country. I’ve never heard of this before. It made no sense to me. You would think we would consume the cow where it had been raised. Apparently, it’s cheaper to raise cattle in a particular region and then ship it across the sea to another region. This adds to the carbon emissions caused by eating beef, and there are horrific stories of cattle ships sinking out at sea. If you are vegetarian or vegan, this will make you even more certain that you’re doing the right thing."