The Outlaw Ocean

Resumen del libro

The Outlaw Ocean is a riveting, adrenaline-fuelled tour of a vast, lawless and rampantly criminal world that few have ever seen: the high seas.

There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world's oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to the unbridled extremes of human behaviour and activity.

Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortionists, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways: drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world and their risk-fraught lives. Through their stories of astonishing courage and brutality, survival and tragedy, he uncovers a globe-spanning network of crime and exploitation that emanates from the fishing, oil and shipping industries, and on which the world's economies rely.

Both a gripping adventure story and a stunning expose, this unique work of reportage brings fully into view for the first time the disturbing reality of a floating world that connects us all, a place where anyone can do anything because no one is watching.

Biografía del autor

Periodista de investigación para el New York Times, The Atlantic y National Geographic, entre otros. Miembro de High Seas Initiative Leadership Council en el Instituto Aspen. Sus investigaciones se centran en la seguridad de los trabajadores y el medio ambiente. También ha escrito extensamente sobre temas de justicia penal, destacando el tema de la dependencia que tiene el Departamento de Defensa de los Estados Unidos sobre el trabajo penitenciario. Ha recibido un Pulitzer, un Polk y ha sido nominado para un Emmy. Varias de las piezas de investigación de Urbina han sido adaptadas al cine.