The first episode drops Monday. Join us for an epic journey spanning both poles, all seven oceans and more than three dozen countries.
Painful though it is for me, as a print reporter, to admit, the written word (even in more capable hands than mine) is a dull tool. Audio has a sharper ability to focus the mind, amplify the imagination, grab sentiment. If nothing else, our reporting is an anthropological tour of a sometimes dystopian netherworld and its gritty cast of characters. As such, telling these stories in audio is distinctly powerful and well suited to the subject.
Created and produced by The Outlaw Ocean Project, the seven-part series is being distributed by CBC Podcasts and the L.A. Times.
It explores the planet’s watery two-thirds, a lawless realm rarely seen. Along the way we meet traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men. We hear from vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion providers, clandestine oil dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways.
Every Monday, starting next week, we’ll push out a new episode detailing a variety of issues and colorful characters.
In the debut episode, a ten-minute slow-motion slaughter captured by a cell phone camera shows a group of unarmed men at sea, possibly 15 of them, killed one by one by a semiautomatic weapon, after which the culprits posed for celebratory selfies.
The episode will explore the explosion of violence on the high seas, how Somali piracy is often used as a pretext for bloodletting by private security guards and the reasons that offshore crime often happens with impunity.
You can listen to the episodes as they come out by clicking here: