The World of the Seafarer

Front matter

WMU Studies in Maritime Affairs 9

Victor Oyaro Gekara Helen Sampson Editors

The World of the Seafarer

Contents

INIFOGüOH0g 2 y eee er ee ee er ee ee 1 Helen Sampson

PartI Going to Sea

A Taste of the Sea: Artisanal Fishing Communities in the PHIBDABIN0S. uu y uy eee hie aan Ee ROE Rete eee nds 9 Nelson Turgo

Part II Being at Sea

Transitions and Adjustments Made by Seafarers Whilst at Sea.... 79 Helen Devereux

The Rhythms of Shipboard Life: Work, Hierarchy, Occupational Helen Sampson viii

Contents

The Experience of Being a Filipino Seafarer on a Multinationally Crewed SID: «544042440 ADR eS enira Sed NEE i h RRE ERS 99 Iris Acejo

U e r E E TT TET 113 Ngwatung Akamangwa

Conghua Xue

Multiple Roles and Role Conflict: Seafarers As Economic, Amaha Senu

Part III Support for Seafarers and Their Families

Union Organising in the Context of Regional Labour Market Victor Oyaro Gekara

Ralph Buiser

Lijun Tang

Chapter 1 A) Introduction Cheek fo Helen Sampson

The shipping industry transported a total volume of 10.3 billion tons of cargo in 2017 (UNCTAD 2017) and is estimated to employ 1.5 million workers (http://www. ilo.org/global/standards/subjects-covered-by-international-labour-standards/sea farers/lang%2D%2Den/index.htm accessed 1/2/18) who are classed as seafarers. Such workers are employed on different vessel types in the cruise and cargo sectors. Sailors working for the military are not classed as seafarers. However, seafarers may be employed on board in a variety of roles which are not directly associated with marine navigation (as croupiers or entertainers on a cruise ship for example) but their ship should be engaged in a voyage which would differentiate them from taking a “fishing trip’ for example. Doumbia-Henry describes some of the provisions of ILO Convention No. 185 stating that:

Article 1 defines the seafarer as “any person who is employed or engaged or works in any capacity on board a vessel, other than a ship of war, ordinarily engaged in maritime navigation”. This is a very broad definition of seafarers, extending the term seafarer to persons working on board a ship who may not be ship’s crew. It covers all those who work on a ship and need an identity document for the purposes of shore leave, joining ship or transit to join a ship or repatriation. (Doumbia-Henry 2003, p. 135)

This edited collection, focuses on those seafarers who work in the cargo sector of the industry on board a variety of ships such as oil and chemical tankers, gas carriers, bulk carriers (carrying minerals or wood products for example), refrigerated cargo vessels, container ships, and what are termed “general cargo ships’. Most of these workers are men (Belcher et al. 2003; http://www.ilo.org/global/publications/worldof-work-magazine/articles/)WCMS_081322/lang%2D%2Den/index.htm) who have acquired a range of internationally recognized certificates to qualify for work on board. Such seafarers are employed in various roles relating to navigation, engine

Seafarers International Research Centre, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, UK

e-mail: sampsonh @cf.ac.uk

© The Author(s) 2021 1 V. O. Gekara, H. Sampson (eds.), The World of the Seafarer, WMU Studies in Maritime Affairs 9, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49825-2_1 performance, and vessel/crew maintenance. They are drawn from a range of traditional (e.g. European, OECD) and ‘new’ (e.g. China, Philippines, Myanmar, Indonesia) labour supply countries and frequently work as part of a mixed nationality crew. The vast majority of seafarers are employed by third party crew agencies who are contracted to supply workers to shipowners and shipmanagers on temporary contracts. Typical voyages last for between three and 12 months and many seafarers are technically ‘unemployed’ during their leave periods ashore and uncertain of when, or indeed if, they will be re-called by their agency to join a vessel. As such, although they are relatively well-paid whilst they are on board, seafarers are generally temporary workers employed on precarious contracts.

The global nature of the industry is a challenge to nations which seek to protect their shorelines from pollution/‘security’ threats, and to implement both labour and environmental laws within their territories (including territorial waters). Major pollution incidents and those involving loss of life (particularly amongst passengers) can be seen to have been instrumental in driving change in international regulations covering safety and environmental protection. Such regulations (as well as those relating to security) are produced and amended at the International Maritime Organization which is a United Nations (UN) agency with responsibility for regulating ships as technical entities. The International Labour Organization (another UN special agency) also plays a significant role in the regulation of the sector but this is restricted to matters pertaining to labour standards and seafarers’ rights.

Not only does the industry present challenges to states wishing to safeguard their national economic and security interests, it also presents difficulties for worker representation and protection. Employers tend to operate different wage scales for different nationalities on board and on multinational vessels it also common for the duration of a contracted voyage and arrangements for overtime payments to vary with nationality. Thus one third officer from the Philippines (at the end of his contract) may be replaced by another from Ireland who is paid more per month and expected to remain on board for a shorter period of time. Such inequities are accepted by seafarers, who are also acutely aware of their vulnerability in the labour market and for whom the competition for jobs between labour supply countries could easily translate into a classic ‘race to the bottom’. In this context the role of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) has been critical in protecting wages. The ITF is one of a small number of Global Union Federations and is unique in negotiating wages for seafarers employed on open register vessels which are not covered by a recognized collective bargaining agreement. In practice the wage scales negotiated with employers by the ITF play a key role in setting an international benchmark for wages, and the role of national collective bargaining agreements in determining wages has diminished. This leaves many trade unions occupying rather curious positions as job brokers and service providers (Yang 2010) and weakens their capacity, or willingness, to defend the interests of seafarers in dispute with vessel operators.

The shipping industry can be seen to be at the forefront of globalization, and it provides us with a good example of the associated challenges for labour, regulation and standards. As a crucial part of the transport infrastructure that facilitates trade between nations it has indeed ‘driven’ globalization. At the same time, it has, been

1 Introduction 3 transformed by globalisation as ships have “flagged out’ and labour recruitment has been outsourced and off-shored. These processes have been written about and analysed by a number of authors (e.g. Sampson 2013). However the kind of broad perspective contained in such accounts is necessarily produced at the expense of an in depth and detailed consideration of many of the individual elements which comprise the industry. This book addresses the gap in the literature and provides a detailed account of the industry which can be metaphorically likened to a mosaic— or to filling in some of the pieces of a complex jigsaw. The collection is largely based upon chapters produced by the authors of a variety of PhD theses all of which related to the shipping industry but which were otherwise unrelated to one and other constituting free-standing research projects and pieces of work. Students were from a variety of backgrounds and nation states and came together in Cardiff as part of a large postgraduate programme led by Helen Sampson who also makes a contribution to this work as co-editor with Gekara (a member of the first cohort of PhD students starting in 2004) and as the author of Chap. 8. This PhD programme, the scholarships that emerged as a part of it and this book, have only been possible because of generous funding from The Nippon Foundation. The Nippon Foundation funded the PhD programme in full from 2004-2017. Ten cohorts of PhD students were recruited numbering 37 individuals in total. The theses were varied and rich and in this text we attempt to weave a selection of them together to provide a unique insight into a very complex global industry.

The book is organised into three parts which reflect the trajectory of seafarers as they enter the industry.

‘Part P considers where seafarers hail from, why they join the industry, and some of the barriers that particular seafarers face in finding and keeping jobs. As such the component chapters discuss: the history of the Philippines as the leading global labour supply nation; the recruitment practices of agencies operating in China; the policy challenges associated with maintaining adequate training and supply of junior officers in traditional maritime nations in the current labour market jobs; seafaring as a portfolio career and the opportunities and threats to the industry that are presented by current recruitment practices; and the barriers presented to would-be women seafarers who seek a career in this highly male-dominated industry.

Overall, ‘Part l’ provides a better understanding of why it is that the industry may find it challenging to recruit good quality deck officers, and engineers, in the future. Officer shortages have been predicted by analysts for several decades (BIMCO ISF 2015) but the reasons behind such predicted shortages have been less-well described. Whilst relatively poor members of developing (labour export) societies such as the Philippines may continue to seek a career at sea they may be deterred by the costs of training and education in the largely private maritime education and training sector. Meanwhile, Chinese seafarers are less likely than originally predicted to make up any shortfall in the global supply of officers as a result of the operational constraints on Chinese crewing agencies which result in the payment of inflated wages to ratings and inadequate salaries to officers in comparison to international wage rates. These practices deter Chinese officers from continuing to work at sea and may explain why it is that China has not come to dominate the global labour market for seafarers as had previously been predicted by academics and industry insiders. Meanwhile we have seen a reluctance amongst employers to invest in the higher salaries demanded by junior European officers despite the fact that European senior officers remain in demand. This has undermined labour supply in Europe. When these factors are set in a broader context in which seafarers find the life at sea less attractive than it once was, and half of the potential labour force are excluded from seafaring careers as a consequence of their gender, then the long-term prospects for the global supply of high quality officers to the international fleet may indeed seem bleak.

The first three chapters in ‘Part I’ of the book provide an insight into the day-today life of seafarers on board. Chapter 7 describes the transitions and adjustments required of seafarers as they leave home to join a vessel, progress through a ‘tour of duty’ and prepare for the end of their voyage. Chapter 8 discusses issues of nationality and hierarchy in the context of a strong occupational culture and the overwhelming dominance of work on board merchant cargo vessels. Chapter 9 reports on research that focussed upon Filipino seafarers in lower ranking positions and discusses what it is like to live and work on board alongside powerful supervisors and managers.

Seafarers constantly live and work under threat of severe sanctions whether these relate to instant dismissal (a potential consequence of the displeasure of a captain or chief engineer) or to the imposition of personal fines and imprisonment by port authorities charged with enforcing international regulations. These chapters convey a great deal about life on board a commercial cargo vessel and the ways in which seafarers’ activities are constrained and monitored. Such institutionalized and regulated lives can produce high levels of occupational stress. In a context where seafarers’ opportunities for ‘resistance’ and indeed for psychological ‘restoration’ are highly circumscribed such stress is likely to produce a variety of health problems and the potential for high levels of seafarer attrition.

The final three chapters in ‘Part IP direct our attention to some of the specific challenges of working at sea. Seafaring is known to be a relatively dangerous occupation characterized by high rates of occupational illness and work-related fatalities. In 2014 Roberts et al. estimated that the mortality rate for British seafarers over the period 2003-2012 was 21 times higher than that found in the general UK working population (Roberts et al. 2014). However, shipping is also an industry that has been associated with headline-grabbing oil spills which produce a great deal of pollution and more recently it has been characterized by some states as constituting a potential threat to national security as well as playing a role in the facilitation of covert (undocumented) migration. As a result of these combined ‘threats’ the industry has been increasingly regulated and Chaps. 10, 11 and 12 deal with some of the intended and unintended consequences of such regulation. Chapter 10 describes the ways in which regulatory requirements (in this case relating to environmental protection) structure the experience of work and the ways in which work is conducted on board. In Chap. 11 Xue sheds light on the management of safety on board vessels crewed and managed within China, and in Chap. 12 Senu describes the rarely considered impact, on seafarers, of attempts to prevent the carriage of shipboard stowaways and to deter the rescue of undocumented migrants imperilled at sea.

In ‘Part III’ we look beyond the ship to consider the shore-based and computerfacilitated mechanisms which are currently available to support contemporary

1 Introduction 5 seafarers and their families as they grapple with challenges associated with participation in the industry. As such Gekara considers the challenges that are posed to national trade unions attempting to support and represent seafarers participating in a global sector; Buiser reflects on the limits to trade union support in the Philippines; and Tang discusses the on line support that has developed in China to support seafarers’ partners and assist them in enduring the consequences of the long absences of serving seafarers.

In combination these chapters provide a wealth of detail about a range of key actors and stakeholders engaged in the cargo shipping sector. The book is organized with a logic that allows it to either be read from start to finish or in a more piecemeal fashion. However it is used, it serves to provide a remarkable insight into a poorly understood, global, fragmented, industry of considerable scale.

Belcher, P., H. Sampson, M. Thomas, J. Veiga, and M. Zhao. 2003. Women Seafarers — Global Employment Policies and Practices. Geneva: International Labour Office. 92-2-113491-1. BIMCO ISF. 2015. MANPOWER REPORT The global supply and demand for seafarers in 2015

(Executive Summary). www.bimco.org. Accessed 9 Feb 18.

Doumbia-Henry, C. 2003. Current Maritime Labour Law Issues — An Internationally Uniform Identity Document for Seafarers. WMU Journal of Maritime Affairs 2 (2): 129-148.

Roberts, S., D. Nielsen, A. Kottowski, and B. Jaremin. 2014. Fatal Accidents and Injuries Among Merchant Seafarers Worldwide. Occupational Medicine (London) 64 (4): 259-266. https:// cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa18992. https://doi.org/10.1093/occmed/kqu017.

Sampson, H. 2013. International Seafarers and Transnationalism in the Twenty-First Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

UNCTAD. 2017. Review of Maritime Transport 2017. Geneva: UNCTAD. http://unctad.org/en/ PublicationsLibrary/rmt2017_en.pdf

Yang, P. 2010. Romance of the Three Unions: A Comparative Study of the Identity Discourses of Three Indian Maritime Trade Unions. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. http://www.sirc.cf.ac.uk/ Uploads/Thesis/Yang.pdf. Accessed 1 Feb 18.

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

PartI Going to Sea

Chapter 2 A) A Taste of the Sea: Artisanal Fishing asii Communities in the Philippines Nelson Turgo

The Philippines remains one of the top suppliers of seafarers to the global merchant fleet. In the 2015 BIMCO Manpower Report on seafarer supply countries, the Philippines ranked first for ratings and second for officers with 363,832 Filipino seafarers deployed to ocean-going merchant vessels in 2014 and accounting for 28% of the global supply of seafarers (MARINA 2015). Seafarers are crucial in keeping the Philippine economy afloat and in 2018, Filipino seafarers sent home USD 6.14 billion (Hellenic Shipping News 2019), accounting for about a fifth of the USD 32.2 billion overseas workers sent home that year (Inquirer 2019). The Philippines has developed as a major player in the crewing sector of the global maritime industry primarily because of its maritime history (Giraldez 2015; Mercene 2007; Schurz 1939), its maritime geography and the continued centrality of the sea to many people’s lives (as attested to by the presence of the myriad fishing communities dotted around the many islands of the country) (Warren 2003, 2007), the economic liberalisation of the 1970s and the concomitant institutionalisation of the labour export policies as enacted by Philippine governments since the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos whose latter policy saw many Filipinos seeking employment overseas (Asis 2017; Kaur 2016; Wozniak 2015).

This concatenation of circumstances can be seen to have produced the dominant contemporary role of Filipino seafarers. Some of these have been drawn from traditional fishing communities where precarious lives are endured, by many who are subject to exploitation and at times violence on board commercial fishing vessels. This provides a backdrop to the economic and geographical context of how the

N. Turgo ( Cardiff University, Seafarers International Research Centre, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff Wales, UK

e-mail: turgon @cf.ac.uk

© The Author(s) 2021 9 V. O. Gekara, H. Sampson (eds.), The World of the Seafarer, WMU Studies in Maritime Affairs 9, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49825-2_2

Philippines became a leading provider of seafarers to the world. This chapter reviews the existing literature on the topic including international and Philippine government reports and statistics on seafarers and the maritime industry. Previous interviews with fishermen and data from fieldwork in the fishing community which contributed to a PhD thesis by the author are also used.

The Importance of the Sea

As an archipelago of 7107 islands, the Philippines has an extensive coastline of 17,460 km in length and about 26.6 million ha of coastal waters and 193.4 million ha of oceanic waters. The country exercises authority over 2.2 million square kilometers (or 220 million ha) of territorial ocean waters including its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) (BFAR 2014). Prior to colonization, the sea and bodies of inland waters provided a means of transportation and trade for indigenous people.' All over the country, archaeological finds attest to the extensive connection of the archipelago to ancient kingdoms like Siam (now Thailand) and the Middle Kingdom (now China) and the far-reaching travels of the native people to other ancient realms like Srivijaya (largely in what is now Indonesia) (Corpuz 2005). In Butuan in Agusan del Norte (a province in Mindanao, one of the Philippines’ three major island groups) massive wooden boats called ‘balangay’ pre-dating the arrival of the Spaniards by hundreds of years, were unearthed in the 1970s, clear testimonies to the mobile ways and sea prowess of the ancient Filipinos (Clark et al. 1993). By riding the crest of waves in their wooden boats, they established connections to their Southeast Asian neighbours, learnt of their cultures and imbibed their ways of life (Warren 2003, 2007). Later under the rule of Spain, from 1815 onwards Philippine products were sent to the Spanish empire via Mexico in what historians call the galleon trade. In this intercontinental exchange, many Filipinos served as crew and had a taste of foreign cultures and the joys and perils of life on board (Aguilar 2012; Guevarra 2011; Mercene 2007). When the Philippines became a US territory at the beginning of the twentieth century, Filipinos were recruited to serve in the US Navy. In 1903 just nine Filipinos were recruited to join the US Navy; but by the First World War their number had risen to 6000 (Aguilar 2012, p. 384). Given this continuing engagement by Filipinos with the sea across time, it is not surprising that Filipinos have come to dominate employment at sea, bringing with them hundreds of years of sea-going tradition and culture.

In addition to travel, the sea has presented a myriad of opportunities to Filipinos providing the means to barter with people in other locations as well as furnishing them with a much-needed regular diet of protein for everyday sustenance. Thus,

'The Philippines was never called by its present name until 1543 when the islands Samar and Leyte, two big islands south of Manila, were named after Prince Philip, Prince of Asturias, by the explorer Ruy Lopez de Villalobos and the name stuck until it referred to the entire archipelago.

2 ATaste of the Sea: Artisanal Fishing Communities in the Philippines 11 fishing communities are a regular feature of many islands in the Philippines. Currently, it is estimated that there are over 1.5 million fishermen in the country whether large-scale (meaning commercial and on the high seas) or small-scale (within the municipal waters) (BFAR 2018).

The Philippines is one of the major producers of fish in the world and in 2016, it ranked 10th amongst the top fish producing countries, with a total production of 1.87 million metric tonnes of fish, crustaceans, molluscs and aquatic plants including seaweed (FAO 2018). Some nine million more Filipinos indirectly depend on the fishing industry through fish trading, fish food production and the manufacturing of boats, fishing gear, and related products (PSA 2017). In the fourth quarter of 2018, the fisheries sector contributed 8.9% to the country’s GDP (DTI 2019).

Fishermen in the Philippines can be divided into two types. The first type comprises those employed by big fishing companies whose fishing vessels are engaged in commercial’ fishing outside the country’s municipal waters. The second type is made up of small-scale fishermen whose fishing is limited to the country’s municipal waters? and could be characterised as ‘subsistence’, does not require fishing boats or whose fishing boats weigh not more than three gross tons (see also Kurien 1998, 2003; Stobutzki et al. 2006). In many cases, the former earn a monthly wage of PHP12-15,000 (USD250-315) a month with add-ons and bonuses depending on the volume of catch per fishing season* while the latter’s remuneration is governed by a system unique to the fishing industry called clear or broken lay (see also St Martin 2005, 2007). The cited monthly income of fishermen aboard commercial fishing vessels is based on an assumed wage arrangement prescribed by the national government for fishermen working on commercial fishing vessels. However, reports state that in many cases, “fish workers” all over the country receive an average daily pay of between PHP150-180 ($3.30-4)—way below the minimum wage set by regional wage boards for agricultural and non-agricultural workers in rural Philippines (Corpuz 2014).

Poverty remains a constant defining feature of many, if not all, fishing communities in the Philippines (Eder 2005; Guieb 2009; Mangahas 1993, 2000; Turgo 2010; Ushijima and Zayas 1994). According to Pamalakaya (an NGO working for the welfare of fishermen in the Philippines) surveys conducted by the National

?Commercial fishing involves catching of fishery species by passive or active gear for trade, business or profit beyond subsistence or sports fishing to be further classified as: 1. small scale— with passive or active gear utilizing fishing vessels of 3.1 GT up to 20 GT; 2. medium scale— utilizing active gears and vessels of 20.1 GT up to 150 GT; 3. large scale—utilizing active gears and vessels of more than 150 GT. Commercial fishers cannot conduct fishing activities within the 15 km municipal waters unless the local government concerned allows them from 10.1 km to 15 km. They can also operate in foreign or international waters. (Primer RA8550, p. 2).

Municipal waters as defined in Republic Act 8550 are marine waters 15 km from the coastline including streams, rivers, public forest, timber land, forest reserve or fishery reserve within the municipality except those under the NIPAS Law (BFAR 2015).

“Targets are usually set by fishing companies and if these are met and at times surpassed, bonuses are paid to fishermen. On the other hand, skippers are paid differently depending on the arrangement they have with company officials.

Statistical Coordination Board (NCSB) in 2006, 2009 and 2010 revealed that the Jisherfolk sector has the highest poverty incidence in the country. Furthermore, the NSCB revealed that the fisherfolk, farmers and children comprised the poorest segments of the population across the country with poverty incidence of 49.9%, 44% and 40.8% respectively (Corpuz 2014). This is not new and a visit to many fishing communities in the country reveals the appalling quality of life for most fishermen and their families. They live in houses where basic sanitation is almost non-existent; there is no running water and no electricity. Hygiene is, to say the least, dismal.”

These communities are also the most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. Since they live close to the shore, their houses and properties are prone to destruction brought about by strong wind and tidal surges. Fatalities are therefore an inevitable consequence. This vulnerability was clearly displayed in catastrophic events in the Philippines and other countries like Thailand, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, during the 2004 tsunami, caused by an Indian Ocean earthquake. Recently, typhoon Haiyan’s (locally known as Yolanda) land-fall in the Philippines in November 2013 further illustrates the extreme vulnerability of people living in fishing communities. A report produced by OXFAM, stated that 30,000 boats were lost to the typhoon. Furthermore, in the aftermath of the typhoon, the Philippine Department of Agriculture estimated that 202,410 fishing households, a total of 865,305 individuals, had been affected (OXFAM 2014).

Fishing is considered to be the most dangerous occupation in the world (FAO 2018). In this regard, commercial fishing is more prone to accidents and deaths at sea. Furthermore, exploitation, violence and slavery characterise employment in the commercial fishing sector (Couper et al. 2015; Pocock et al. 2018). The length of time out at sea and the intensity of fishing activities taking place on commercial fishing vessels make it more open to fatal accidents. In addition, while small-scale fishing recruits people of the same kinship network, which limits if not constrains the likelihood of exploitation, abuse and violence, commercial fishing does not.° Commercial fishing operators recruit personnel from the provinces and require them to fish for weeks and months on end which limits, if not totally cuts off, their communication with people ashore (Couper et al. 2015).’ This increases the

*In the fishing community that I studied, I once interviewed a couple in their living room that was so dirty and the smell of dried feces and rotten animals (maybe rats, I thought) was so nauseous that I had to terminate the interview at some point before I got overwhelmed by the smell. This is of course not generic as some other houses tried to be as clean and orderly as possible.

°In most fishing communities, fishing is usually conceived to be a family enterprise, and crews are drawn from within the family or immediate relations. In such an arrangement, as fishermen come from the same family or kin (both real and fictive), exploitation is almost nil as taking advantage of others could create rifts amongst family members and endanger close relationships in the community.

"Unlike modern day merchant vessels, commercial fishing vessels rarely have internet provision or any other means of communication to the shore aside from satellite phones which are kept most of the time by the skipper or captain and can only be used in emergency situations.

2 A Taste of the Sea: Artisanal Fishing Communities in the Philippines 13 possibility of exploitation since fishermen are at the mercy of owners. Cases of exploitation of Filipino fishermen aboard commercial fishing vessels registered in Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand, the UK and many others are well documented (Couper et al. 2015; Howard 2012; Yea 2014).

As attested to by many studies, working conditions in many commercial fishing boats are appalling (see, for example, Couper et al. 2015; Simmons and Stringer 2014; Brown 2009). Sleep is a scarce commodity on board; fishermen may be required to work 24 hours a day regardless of the weather and their levels of fatigue. Sleeping quarters may be equipped with simple hammocks and rooms are not insulated from the cold weather. A fisherman I interviewed told me how he had to endure sleeping in a very cold room (or very hot depending on the season of the year) together with some five other men for one entire year. In 2019, I visited a fishing vessel anchored in a port in Taiwan and saw for myself the very basic and uncomfortable living quarters of fishermen. A Filipino crew member told me that on some fishing vessels that he had been on, they had to schedule their sleeping time since the room was very small and could only accommodate five people at a time. Medical treatment was also non-existent for many of fishermen falling ill on the vessel. The same fisherman also told me that when a young fisherman from Vietnam (14 years old) fell grievously ill (he had a recurring stomach ache), the owners of the fishing vessel did not allow them to moor the boat to unload the sick fisherman to seek treatment. They were told to make use of the available medicine on board instead. The young fisherman soon died and again the owners did not allow them to berth in the nearest port. They kept his body in the cold storage together with their catch. Before going back to the Philippines (they fished mostly in the area between the Philippines and Indonesia), they were ordered to dispose of the body since it was considered by the vessel owners to be too costly to repatriate it to Vietnam. The company then reported to his family that he absconded in a fishing port and was not seen again.