Silwanus, an Indonesian migrant fisher, was working aboard the Marine Stewardship Council-certified (MSC) Taiwanese distant-water vessel Chang Yi No. 368 in 2024 when a refrigerator door slammed shut during a big wave and severed his fingertips.
“My fingers are gone. If help would have been there right away, maybe my fingers would not be lost,” he told SeafoodSource through translator Truly Walean during the 2025 Seafood Expo North America (SENA), which ran from 16 to 18 May.
Silwanus was hosted at SENA by workers’ rights organization Global Labor Justice (GLJ), who brought him to the event to speak about how his life might be different today if he had been on a vessel equipped with Wi-Fi.
Silwanus was left with a bone protruding from his finger that he removed himself with a nail clipper. Though he kept his severed fingertips on ice, the captain of his vessel refused to return to port to seek care, and by the time Silwanus returned to land a month later, his fingertips could not be reattached.
Another Indonesian fisher, Adrian, told similar stories about life onboard a Taiwanese distant water tuna fleet.
After months aboard a vessel with inadequate stores of expired food, Adrian watched an ill friend be treated with expired medications and ultimately die, only to be stored in a refrigerator with the vessel’s tuna catch. When he and his fellow fishers threatened a work stoppage over the treatment they had received, their vessel captain withheld their wages.
Without Wi-Fi access, neither Silwanus nor Adrian had the ability to contact his union or family, and neither the captains of their vessels nor the companies the vessels supply to were held accountable for the abuses crew members suffered.
This year marked the third year GLJ has brought its Wi-Fi campaign to SENA.
GLJ celebrated two big wins since the last time it was in Boston: the early February announcement that grocery chain Whole Foods would add labor protections to its sustainability requirements for suppliers, and the unveiling of a recent GLJ publication that codifies model operational guidelines for granting Wi-Fi access for fishers.
GLJ Legal Director Allison Gill said that the momentum gained through her organization’s campaign was enough for her to declare that “our campaign is winning.”
“It is no longer acceptable for there to be union-free zones in the ocean,” she said.
At a GLJ sponsored panel …
