The Fishermen Who Cannot Fish: Thailand's Sea Slaves Are Still Not Free

The man sitting on the dock at Samut Sakhon port had been at sea for eleven months. His name was Soe Min, he was twenty-three, he came from Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Delta, and he had not been paid since October. His captain held his identity documents. His captain also held his phone. When this correspondent asked why he stayed, he looked at the trawler behind him—a rust-streaked vessel with a blue hull and no name visible on the stern—and said, "Where would I go?"

It is April 2026. Thailand has had eight years to fix this. In 2018, after years of pressure from the European Union, the United States, and international labor groups, Bangkok enacted sweeping reforms to end human trafficking in its fishing industry. The government created a new registration system for migrant workers. It established labor inspections at ports. It signed memoranda of understanding with Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar to regulate recruitment. The Thai Ministry of Labor declared the problem solved.

The problem is not solved. Soe Min is not an anomaly. He is one of an estimated 127,000 workers in Thailand's fishing sector who have no legal immigration status, according to an audit published last month by the International Labour Organization's Bangkok office. These are men who cannot leave their vessels without permission. Men whose wages are held by captains as "safekeeping." Men who fish in Thai waters and land catches worth billions of baht and see almost none of it.

What They Left Behind

Most of the men on Thailand's fishing boats come from Myanmar. Some come from Cambodia. A few come from Laos. They leave home because there is no work, or because the military has burned their villages, or because a recruiter in Yangon or Phnom Penh promised them 15,000 baht a month and a air-conditioned cabin. The recruiters lie about the cabin. Sometimes they lie about the wage. Always, they lie about the duration.

The typical contract is for two years. The typical reality is longer. Workers this correspondent interviewed at Samut Sakhon, Songkhla, and Phuket—three of Thailand's largest fishing ports—reported average tenures of thirty-one months before they were allowed to return home. One Cambodian deckhand, who declined to give his name, said he had been aboard the same vessel for four years. He had requested to leave six times. Each time, the captain told him he still owed money for his recruitment fee, his food, his bunk. The debt never shrank.

The system works like this: A recruiter in Myanmar finds young men in the delta or the dry zone. He tells them about jobs in Thailand. He arranges transport across the border—sometimes legal, often not. He delivers them to a broker in Mae Sot or Ranong. The broker sells them to a boat captain for between 20,000 and 35,000 baht per worker. The captain tells the worker he now owes this amount, plus interest. The worker's wages will go toward repaying the debt. In practice, the wages rarely appear. The debt becomes a tool of control.

The Official Version

The Thai government insists it has addressed the problem. Since 2018, the Department of Fisheries has registered 318,000 workers in the commercial fishing sector. It has installed Port-In/Port-Out monitoring systems at 28 major harbors. It has conducted 4,200 labor inspections aboard vessels and at onshore processing facilities. It has prosecuted 47 cases of human trafficking linked to the fishing industry, resulting in 89 convictions.

The statistics are real. The impact is limited. The Port-In/Port-Out system monitors vessel movements, not labor conditions. The inspections are announced in advance, giving captains time to coach workers or keep them belowdecks. The registration system only works for workers who have legal immigration status—and 127,000 do not. For those men, the reforms have changed nothing.

The ILO audit found that fewer than 12 percent of fishing vessels operating out of Thai ports have been subject to unannounced labor inspections since 2020. It found that the memoranda of understanding with Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar—intended to create legal pathways for labor migration—have produced fewer than 8,000 registered crossings for fishing work in the past three years, even as the industry employs an estimated 300,000 migrants. The gap between legal channels and real demand is where the trafficking happens.

What the Data Shows

Thailand's commercial fishing industry is worth $7.3 billion annually, according to the Thai Frozen Foods Association. It exports to 147 countries. Shrimp, tuna, and squid caught in Thai waters end up in supermarkets in Los Angeles, London, and Tokyo. The vessels that catch this seafood are crewed, overwhelmingly, by migrants. Of the roughly 300,000 workers in the sector, the ILO estimates that 240,000 are foreign nationals. Of those, only 113,000 have proper work permits.

The numbers do not capture what it is like to live this way. At Samut Sakhon, workers described shifts of eighteen to twenty hours during peak season. They described sleeping in shifts because there were not enough bunks. They described captains who docked wages for "damage" to nets, for "wasted" fuel, for being too slow. One worker from Myanmar's Rakhine State said his captain fined him 500 baht for falling asleep on deck. Another said he had not set foot on land for fourteen months.

What Nobody Is Saying

The reason this continues is not complicated. Thailand's fishing industry depends on cheap labor. Legal workers cost more. They have rights. They can quit. Undocumented workers cannot. A system that traps people is a system that controls costs. The government knows this. The industry knows this. The export markets pretend not to know this.

International buyers have implemented supply chain audits and sustainability certifications. Walmart, Tesco, and Carrefour all require their Thai seafood suppliers to comply with labor standards. The certifications are largely meaningless. Auditors visit processing plants, not boats. They interview workers in the presence of managers. They check paperwork that has been prepared for the occasion. A 2025 review by the Environmental Justice Foundation found that 73 percent of certified "ethical" seafood suppliers in Thailand sourced from vessels that employed undocumented workers.

The European Union lifted its "yellow card" warning on Thai seafood imports in 2019, concluding that Thailand had made sufficient progress in combating illegal fishing and labor abuses. The decision was premature. The United States continues to list Thailand as a Tier 2 country in its Trafficking in Persons Report—better than the worst offenders, but still failing to meet minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. The designation carries no trade penalties.

What Happens Next

Soe Min sat on the dock for another hour. Then his captain called him. He stood up. He did not look at this correspondent again. He walked back to the trawler with the blue hull and climbed aboard. Two hours later, the vessel left port. It will not return for at least two months. Soe Min will be on it the whole time. When he comes back, if he comes back, he will still have no papers. He will still owe money he never borrowed. He will still be trapped.

There are 127,000 men like him. They are fishing in the Gulf of Thailand right now. They are landing catches that will be processed, frozen, and shipped to five continents. They are making someone else rich. They are not free. They have never been free. Eight years of reforms have not freed them.

The Thai government will issue another report. The industry will point to its monitoring systems. The export markets will ask for another certification. And the men on the boats will remain where they are, because no one with power has decided that freeing them is more important than keeping seafood cheap.