How Indian fishers suffer exploitation and abuse on UK boats

On a cold January morning in 2023, Mariyappan woke up to an email that would change his life forever. A fishing company in the United Kingdom was offering him a job as a deckhand for a monthly salary of 1,400 pounds, or Rs 1,47,000, an amount that he thought could lift his family out of poverty.

Mariyappan, who belongs to a fishing community in Kanniyakumari, Tamil Nadu, immediately accepted the offer, from the Star Fishing Company. On February 26, he boarded a plane in Chennai and reached London, flying via Doha. He had been issued a transit visa, which offers holders a 48-hour window to pass through United Kingdom territories.

His destination was Aberdeen, a port city in northeast Scotland, where a car was waiting to transport him to the fishing vessel to which he had been assigned, Star of Jura. He joined the boat on February 27 and began his work alongside two other Indians, Bishan and Santosh, who were from Kerala and who were already part of the crew as deckhands. (Crew members asked to be identified by pseudonyms because they feared their livelihood opportunities would otherwise be jeopardised.)

A deckhand’s job is to clean decks, prepare fishing gear, maintain equipment, and manage the...

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