Seafood from slavery: Can Thailand tackle the crisis in its fishing industry?

The hours would be long and the work hard, but spending a year as a fisherman seemed like a good option to Samart Senasook.

Previous jobs as a security guard in Bangkok had been sporadic, so when a man known as Vee promised the 40-year old decent wages on a fishing boat he decided to take the chance.

Vee turned out to be a broker, a link in the chain of human trafficking that supplies the Thai fishing industry with thousands of migrant workers and turns many of them into virtual slaves.

There were times I was about to jump into the sea to kill myself.

Samart Senasook, trafficked fisherman

The boat he was on was impounded by Indonesian authorities for suspected illegal fishing, with Senasook and his crewmates held in custody.

Six years a slave

Looking back on his ordeal, that he says lasted from January 2009 to March 2015, Senasook rarely saw land, as the boat he was on roamed further and further from Thai waters in search of increasingly scarce fish.

Its catch was part of Thailand's multi-billion dollar seafood industry that feeds tens of millions in Europe and the United States.

Senasook describes his life on board as one full of intimidation, sleep deprivation and regular beatings from the boat's captain.

The extent of the situation is hard to gauge. Thai government figures state that there are 145,000 working in its fishing industry, with 80% of those migrant workers, mainly from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. However, activist group Raks Thai Foundation suggests there are in excess of 200,000 trafficked, unregistered workers.

Pirate Fishing

People & Power takes to the seas off Sierra Leone to investigate the multi-million dollar illegal fishing trade.

The precious marine resources of some of the world's poorest people are being targeted by industrial-scale pirate fishing operations, to feed the seafood hungry markets of Europe and Asia.

The problem is particularly acute in West African waters where fish is a vital - and often the only - protein source for millions of people.

In a special two-part investigation, People & Power set out in 2012, to identify and expose some of those involved in the multi-million dollar trade and to look in particular at its consequences for the impoverished West African nation of Sierra Leone. More than two years later, in 2014, the problems are still the same, and now Al Jazeera is re-airing the investigations.

In part one of Pirate Fishing, reporter Juliana Ruhfus and producer Orlando von Einsiedel take to the seas off Sierra Leone with an NGO, the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), which has been trying to raise awareness about the issue

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