According to estimates by Japan's coast guard, about 100 bodies appear on the country's coast each year. All of the dead are fishermen from North Korea.
Japan suspected that this macabre portrait might be about spies, or deserters lost and starving in stormy seas.
In parallel to these deaths, something else caught the attention of scientists. In Korean waters, the number of squid plummeted by more than 70%.
Ghost ships off the coast of Japan. Image: The Outlaw Ocean Project.
In this new episode, Ian Urbina, in partnership with Global Fishing Watch, investigates the link between the mysterious case of North Korea's ghost ships and the plummeting squid population in the East Sea of Japan.
This series, winner of the Digital Media Americas 2023 award, awarded by WAN-IFRA, as Best Podcast, exposes the largest case of illegal fishing in maritime history perpetrated by the Chinese "dark fleet".