Correspondence
Email sent to Tianjin Rongxiang Aquatic Products Co. Ltd.
Tianjin Rongxiang Aquatic Products Co Ltd owns the Jinhanyu 4879. The email said that a diary kept by a Chinese deckhand, excerpts of which were published by Henan Legal News, stated that: 1. In May, 2013, the Chinese deckhand paid a manning agency a two-hundred-dollar recruitment fee, which dispatched him to a ship called the Jinhanyu 4879. The crew were told that their first ten days on board would be a trial period, after which they could leave, but the ship stayed at sea for a hundred and two days. “You are slaves to work anytime and anywhere,” he wrote in his diary. 2. Officers got meat at mealtimes, he said, but deckhands got only bones. “The bell rings, you must be up, whether it is day, night, early morning, no matter how strong the wind, how tight the rain, there are no Sundays and holidays.” The email asked for comment from the ship's captain.