I must admit that I didn’t know anything about ocean crime and what happens at sea before I was introduced to Ian’s book. Upon reading The Outlaw Ocean, I found myself heartbroken by the stories it told, most especially the children who were victims of the illicit acts around them. They had no power or voice and, as I continued the book, I thought that perhaps I could help give them a voice through my music.  

There was one story about a Vietnamese boy, only 13-years-old, who was arrested and put in an Indonesian detention camp for being caught on a foreign boat illegally fishing. I wrote “Child of the Pontianak” about him. The song “Rui’s Tavern,” inspired by the vulnerable children trafficked to work in the fishing industry, solely featured audio Ian recorded during his reporting, giving it a haunting sense of realism. The track “Maritime Merry-Go-Round,” which is a sorrowful and melancholy tune, is based on the fate of those whose fathers were murdered at sea. Even if the abuse wasn’t direct — such as pervasive pollution — I wanted to capture this concept in all of my tracks. For “In The Wake,” we recorded kids speaking a range of different languages saying, “The waste spewed into the waves will eventually affect us all,” so people could hear directly from those who will have to pay the cost. All art is about feeling something and an artist is the one that can help guide people to what those feelings might be.

Laura Sullivan