The Outlaw Ocean Project is an ongoing multimedia investigation by writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Ian Urbina. As part of our collaboration, Reporters United has undertaken the publication of stories and multimedia content from the project, which documents how unlawful acts at sea endanger not only the lives of fishermen and seamen, but also the biodiversity of marine ecosystems.

The Outlaw Ocean Project has so far covered five seas and 14 countries, extending across Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean, South America and the Middle East.

Ian Urbina has been working as an investigative journalist for over two decades. His stories have been adapted into feature films, while the rights for The Outlaw Ocean have been secured by Netflix and Leonardo Di Caprio.

Ian is also a member of the Reporters United Advisory Board, advising on stories relating to shipping and the fishing industry, subjects which remain outside the scope of most Greek media despite Greece’s powerful presence in the sector (or perhaps because of it).

The Outlaw Ocean Project has resulted in eight front-page stories in the New York Times, and a New York Times best-selling book which has been published in 11 countries.  

In the course of writing The Outlaw Ocean, Ian recounted the story of a Burmese migrant who had been shackled by the neck on a trawler and enslaved at sea for 3 years. He shadowed a Tanzanian stowaway who, discovered at sea by an angry crewmember, was set overboard on a raft and left to die.

The first story in the Outlaw Ocean series, which was published in the New York Times in 2015, opens on the Greek island of Chios, following the eventful life of a ship, the Dona Liberta, which found itself for a significant period in Greek hands. The story received the 2015 George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting.