Crime on the High Seas

THE THUNDER SINKING. April 2015. The Sea Shepherd ships remain at a safe distance from the sinking poaching vessel.

New York Times investigative reporter Ian Urbina discusses his four-part series, “The Outlaw Ocean.” Few places on the planet are as lawless as the high seas, where egregious crimes are routinely committed with impunity. Today’s maritime laws have hardly more teeth than they did centuries ago, when history’s great empires first explored the oceans’ farthest reaches.