Latest news with #DanielAritonang
Daily Maverick
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Maverick
Listen — the undisputed superpower of the seas (China pt. 1) Episode 6
Spread across the Earth's oceans, the Chinese distant-water fishing fleet is the single largest armada in human history. This three-part series is an unprecedented investigation into their secretive fishing practices. The fleet is so gargantuan that even the Chinese government can't account for all its vessels. We do know it has hauled in more than $35-billion worth of catch per year and sold it across the globe – and yet, almost nothing was known about its practices. That is, until the Outlaw Ocean team started asking questions, and eventually managed to get aboard. Episode highlights: Averaging one dead body every six weeks, mostly-Chinese fishing vessels have been dropping off their deceased in Uruguay's coastal capital for years. But in 2021, an Indonesian deckhand named Daniel Aritonang arrives clinging to life. He's conscious enough to say he'd been beaten, tied up by the neck and starved for days; We learn Daniel's story is shockingly common in the world's Chinese-run fish processing infrastructure. It's a realm where health and human safety are secondary to meeting quotas and where forced labour and human rights abuses are rampant. We learn how vulnerable people like Daniel are recruited, and how routinely they never make it home; and The team is convinced that they need to speak directly to the crew on one of these vessels. They themselves are shocked when a captain agrees to let them aboard. Even more surprising, a minder briefly leaves host Ian Urbina alone with the crew and immediately some men plead to be rescued.
Boston Globe
12-07-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
An ancient scourge on a modern Chinese fishing boat
Daniel Aritonang, right, poses with other crew members on the deck of the Zhen Fa 7 on July 7, 2021. The Outlaw Ocean Project/Ferdi Arnando/Facebook When Aritonang climbed onto his assigned squid ship, called the Zhen Fa 7, he joined what may be the largest maritime operation the world has ever known. In the past few decades, partly in an effort to project its influence abroad, China has dramatically expanded its distant-water fishing fleet. Chinese firms now own or operate terminals in 95 foreign ports. China estimates that it has twenty-seven hundred distant-water fishing ships, though this figure does not include vessels in contested waters; public records and satellite imaging suggest that the fleet may be closer to sixty-five hundred ships. (The United States and the European Union, by contrast, have fewer than three hundred distant-water fishing vessels each.) Chinese squid ships, which make up the largest distant water fleet in the world, fish near the Falkland Islands. Ed Ou//The Outlaw Ocean Project Some ships that appear to be fishing vessels press territorial claims in contested waters, including in the South China Sea and around Taiwan. 'This may look like a fishing fleet, but, in certain places, it's also serving military purposes,' Ian Ralby, who runs I.R. Consilium, a maritime-security firm, said. But China's preeminence at sea has come at a cost. The country is largely unresponsive to international laws, and its fleet is the worst perpetrator of illegal fishing in the world, helping drive species to the brink of extinction. Its ships are also rife with labor trafficking, debt bondage, violence, criminal neglect, and death. 'The human rights abuses on these ships are happening on an industrial and global scale,' said Steve Trent, the CEO of the Environmental Justice Foundation. Related : The investigation into Aritonang's death is part of Season 2 of The Outlaw Ocean Podcast, which derives from four years of reporting, mostly at sea. The podcast is available on all major streaming platforms. For transcripts, background reporting, and bonus content, visit Before taking the job on the Chinese ship, Aritonang had struggled to find work. The rate of unemployment in his native Indonesia was high: more than 5.5 percent nationally, and more than 16 per cent for youth. Climate change has made matters worse; many of Indonesia's 17,000 islands are sinking. Aritonang's home is roughly 100 yards from the Indian Ocean. His village is losing coast from sea level rise at an average of between 10 and 15 yards a year. When Hengki Anhar, a local friend, suggested the two of them go abroad together on a fishing boat, Aritonang agreed. Friends and family were surprised by his decision, because the demands of the job were so high and the pay so low. But a job was a job, and both he and Anhar desperately needed work. The Chinese squid jigger Fu Yuan Yu 7619 prepares to begin fishing near the Galapagos Islands at sunset in July 2022. Ben Blankenship/The Outlaw Ocean Project In 2019, Aritonang and Anhar contacted a 'manning' agency based in Central Java. In the maritime world, manning agencies recruit and supply workers to fishing ships. These agencies handle everything, including paychecks, work contracts, plane tickets, port fees, and visas. They are poorly regulated, frequently abusive, and have been connected to human trafficking. Following the agency's instructions, Aritonang and Anhar went to the Javanese city of Tegal. They took medical exams and handed over their passports and bank documents. For the next two months, they waited to hear if they had been hired. Money ran short. Through Facebook Messenger, Aritonang wrote to his friend Firmandes Nugraha, asking for help paying for food. Nugraha urged him to return home. 'You don't even know how to swim,' Nugraha reminded him. Eventually assignments came through and, in September 2019, Aritonang appeared in a Facebook photo with other Indonesians waiting in Busan, South Korea, to board their fishing vessels. 'Just a bunch of not-high-ranking people who want to be successful by having a bright future,' Aritonang posted on Facebook. Aritonang and Anhar boarded the Zhen Fa 7, which set sail across the Pacific. The ship's crew numbered 30 men: 20 from China, and the remaining 10 from Indonesia. The vessel was scheduled to spend the next several months chasing squid in international waters off the coast of South America. In December, 2020, the Zhen Fa 7 left the vicinity of the Galapagos Islands, sailed around the southern tip of South America, through the Strait of Magellan, and made its way north to an immensely productive high-seas squid fishery known as the Blue Hole, about 360 miles above the Falkland Islands. The bounty was plentiful there, and the captain began working his crew around the clock. A month later, Aritonang fell severely ill. According to a forensic pathologist who examined his autopsy report at the request of the Outlaw Ocean Project, he probably suffered from a disease called beriberi, caused by a deficiency of vitamin B1, also known as thiamine. Daniel Aritonang lies on a stretcher with swollen feet, a telltale sign of beriberi caused by nutrition deficiency. Jesica Reyes Sometimes called 'rice disease,' and often an indication of conditions of captivity, beriberi has historically broken out on ships and in prisons, asylums, and migrant camps — anywhere diets have consisted mainly of white rice or wheat flour, both very poor sources of thiamine. On board the Zhen Fa 7, the captain issued each Indonesian two boxes of Supermi instant noodles per week for free. The costs for any additional snacks, coffee, alcohol, or cigarettes were deducted from their salaries. The Indonesians were paid $250 per month, along with a $20 bonus per ton of squid caught. Related : The Indonesians on board begged the captain to get Aritonang onshore for medical attention, but the captain refused. Later, when asked to explain the captain's refusal, Anhar, Aritonang's friend and crewmate, said, 'There was still a lot of squid. We were in the middle of an operation.' By February 2021, Aritonang could no longer stand. He moaned in pain, slipping in and out of consciousness. Incensed, the Indonesian crew threatened to strike and the captain finally acquiesced. The Chinese squid jigger Zhe Pu Yuan 98 doubles as a floating hospital to treat deckhands without bringing them to shore. Ben Blankenship/The Outlaw Ocean Project On March 2, Aritonang was transferred to a nearby fuel tanker called the Marlin, which dropped him off in Montevideo six days later. By then it was too late. For several hours, emergency room doctors struggled to keep him alive, while Jesica Reyes, a local interpreter who had been summoned to speak to Aritonang in Bahasa, Indonesia's official language, waited anxiously in the hall. Eventually the doctors emerged from the emergency room to tell her that he had died. In an email, a spokesperson for the Zhen Fa 7's owner, Rongcheng Wangdao Ocean Aquatic Products Co. Ltd., declined to comment on Aritonang's death but said that the company had found no evidence of complaints from the crew about living or working conditions on the vessel. The company added that it had handed the matter over to the China Overseas Fisheries Association, which regulates the industry. Questions submitted to that agency by The Outlaw Ocean Project went unanswered. In the months after an investigation by the
