Among the investigations covered in the book The Outlaw Ocean is that of the Somali 7 fleet, which was a collection of ships that were Thai owned and engaged in human rights, labor and environmental abuses while fishing off the coast of Puntland. After the book was published, it received a lot of global attention from law enforcement, including from the Thai government. The owners and captains tied to these ships reflagged and renamed, but abuses continued and worsened. We also began getting a lot of inquiries about this fleet from law enforcement, academic researchers, lawyers, insurers, journalists and others.
For that reason, we have continued to publish research about the ships while also serving as a clearinghouse for various sources who are seeking to get questions answered about these ships by the wider public. This page will now serve as the location where we will store these reports, original documents and open questions for which we hope to get answers from interested stakeholders.
Here are documents and folders that may be of interest to researchers looking into this case. Q&L Alerts are documents that consist of questions and leads tied to the ongoing investigation of these ships.
- Al Wesam Q&L Alerts 1.0
- Al Wesam Q&L Alerts 2.0
- Al Wesam Q&L Alerts 3.0
- Al Wesam Q&L Alerts 4.0
- Current Questions 07/2020
- Additional Documents
The Outlaw Ocean Project contributed to a report produced by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime and authored by Jay Bahadur, who is among the best researchers around on anything pertaining to Somalia. The report is on three case studies in Somalia to illustrate the intersection between illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing networks and state corruption. Read the full report here.
If anyone has information to offer, answers to our questions in the documents, could you please email ian@theoutlawocean.com.
