‘A riveting, terrifying, thrilling story of a netherworld that few people know about, and fewer will ever observe . The soul of this book is really as outrageous as the ocean itself.’ –Susan Casey, best-selling writer of The Influx: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean

A riveting, adrenaline-fueled tour of the vast, lawless and rampantly criminal globe that few have ever seen: the high seas.

You will find few remaining frontiers on our world. But possibly the wildest, and least recognized, about The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier are the world’s oceans: too big to police, and under no obvious international specialist, these immense parts of treacherous water play sponsor to rampant criminality and exploitation.

Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo males, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion providers, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways — pulling on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of mls from shore, Ian Urbina introduces us towards the inhabitants of this hidden globe. Through their stories of amazing courage and brutality, success and tragedy, he uncovers a globe-spanning network of crime and exploitation that emanates from the angling, oil and shipping and delivery industries, and which the world’s economies rely.

Both a gripping experience story and a stunning exposé, this original function of reportage brings fully into view for the first time the disturbing fact of the floating world that connects us all, a place where anyone can do anything because nobody is watching.