Two-thirds of the planet is covered by water, and much of that space is ungoverned. Human rights and environmental crimes occur often and with impunity in this realm, because the oceans are sprawling and what laws exist are difficult to enforce.
The global public is woefully unaware of what happens at sea. Journalism about and from the oceans is rare. The result: most landlubbers have little idea of how reliant we are on the people who work the water. Half of the world’s population now lives within a hundred miles of the sea, but most people conceive of this space as a liquid desert that we occasionally fly over, a canvas of lighter and darker blues.
