S1 E2: The Dark Fleet

So I have in front of me the thunder, we believe.

Yep, we've got several fishing buoys in the water.

We've got a visual ID on the vessel.

They're about five miles away

now, Adam? They are, yes, 5.7

miles.

5.7 miles away.

We haven't positively confirmed it as the Thunder, but based on its superstructure and profile, it's got to be the Purple Noticed Thunder.

The Thunder was the top of this sort of most wanted Interpol arrest on site list called the Purple List.

This is a list that you have to work to get on and engage in well-documented crimes.

Interpol estimated that the Thunder in the prior decade had sold roughly $76 million worth of largely illegally caught fish.

The Thunder had been banned specifically from fishing in this remote patch of water, and yet for years had been openly fishing in the waters nonetheless, largely because no one's out there to stop them.

And so this was the most wanted vessel of all the illegal vessels on the planet.

It's exciting.

If you look at the taxonomy of crime that plays out offshore, it's pretty diverse and pretty acute.

And yet illegal fishing, I think, is at the top of that hierarchy.

We're talking about one in five fish that end up on plates is illegally caught or, you know, a roughly $120 billion black market industry.

So illegal fishing is the mother of all crimes at sea.

Illegal fishing is a catch-all term that incorporates a lot of different types of crimes.

For example, you have boats that are fishing in places where they're not supposed to be.

Those might be the no-go waters that are near shore and belong to that country and for which you don't have a license to be there.

Or they might be fishing in what's called an MPA, a Marine Protected Area.

These are just sort of protected marine parks where fishing is not supposed to occur.

That's the first category.

The second category is one where boats are targeting species they're not supposed to take out of the water, either species that are endangered or on the edge of being extinct, species that have just been overfished and are strained, whatever.