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In March of 2015, the Associated Press (AP) published AP Investigation: Slaves May Have Caught the Fish You Bought.[1] It was the first in a series of articles the AP would publish over the next eighteen months detailing the squalor and oppression faced daily by thousands of Southeast Asian fishermen.[2] What caught readers’ attention, however, was not merely the unmasking of abuse.[3] It was the reference to Safeway.[4] It was the reference to Wal-Mart.[5] It was the reference to Fancy Feast.[6] It was the allegation that American consumers were complicit in the exploitation of foreign workers, and it was the knowledge that there were photographs to prove it.[7]
To date, the AP’s investigative team has helped free more than 2000 slaves in Southeast Asian fisheries, and has even uncovered similar abuse on American-flagged vessels.[8] Nevertheless, it is evident that the AP’s reporting has only scratched the surface of a deeply entrenched issue.[9] While it is difficult to quantify the scale of labor abuse in fisheries, scholars and agencies agree that fishing industry workers comprise a substantial portion of the 20.9 million people trapped in forced labor worldwide.[10]