Uncovering the Outlaw Ocean: Ian Urbina, Pulitzer Prize winning author, on how the open oceans shape human beings

Big Deep - An Ocean Podcast

In today's episode, I speak with New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ian Urbina. Ian’s investigate journalism about the intersection of the human species and the lawless frontier of the open ocean, most often appears in the new york times, but he frequently writes for the Atlantic and the New Yorker, and culminated in his Times bestseller, “The Outlaw Ocean."

Most often, the people I speak with in this show have a deep passion for the ocean itself and somehow deviate their lives to it. What was intersection about Ian, and why I reached out, was for a slightly different perspective, in particular how the ocean itself shapes human beings, particularly the culture and nature of those who work and live their lives on the open seas.

Most of this takes place in International waters, starting just 12 miles offshore, where no country’s laws are in effect and there is no real jurisdiction protecting workers such as fishermen or long haul cargo shippers, nor the world’s marine life.
Ian readily admits his work trawls darker areas of the human experience as he works to expose the hidden exploitation of sea workers and the ocean environment. But I also found Ian to be a very smart and incredibly warm person, who talked about his path to the work he does, why “here be dragons” resonated with him and an incredible moment in the north Atlantic when the world turned upside down for him.

Scuba Diving, Free Diving, Ocean Environmentalism, Surfing, and Marine Science.
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