The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier

Published Nov. 19, 2019 by Alfred A. Knopf.

ISBN:: 978-0-451-49294-4

(1 review)

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 rampant criminality and exploitation.

Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion providers, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways — drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Ian Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world. 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.

7 editions

Tenured Radical reviewed The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier by Ian Urbina

Review of 'The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This is a compelling, frustrating, and infuriating collection of stories about what goes on beyond our shores, woven together masterfully by Urbina into a damning indictment of so many aspects of our lives - commodity trade and seafood, most obviously - that depend upon lawless cruelty, corruption, and indifference in international waters. Nothing I read here was unknown to me, but Urbina's ability to tell the stories of the voiceless and powerless, while wrestling with the moral complexities of his subject-matter, kept me reading intently, and in my judgement makes this a critically important book. Read it.