Captain wanted. No experience necessary. Doug Pine was on vacation on Maui in June 2009 when he saw the ad online. Pine, then 48, had been out of work for months; the economic downturn had taken a big bite out of maritime work. Experience, though, was one thing he had plenty of. In a 30-year career, mostly working out of Seattle, he’d captained a range of vessels: whale-watching boats in Hawaii, offshore supply ships in the Gulf of Mexico, tugboats in Washington State. But this job posting was unlike anything he’d ever seen.

The ad described a gig as master of a Western Pacific tuna fishing boat, an American ship with a crew of 24 men. The vessel was a purse seiner, a steel-hulled fishing boat that used a gigantic rectangular net that closed like a drawstring purse to catch tuna for StarKist, America’s most popular tuna brand. He sent an email.

Less than 15 minutes later he had a response. It didn’t come from the address listed, but from someone at a Korean company called Dongwon. “When can you be here?” the email asked.

Don’t you want to know anything about me? Don’t you want to interview me? Pine wondered.

But the only questions the company had were if his license and certificates were up to date, and when could he start.

Doug Pine (courtesy Rick Dahms)

Less than two weeks later Pine landed in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands. He’d agreed to a 90-day contract with pay of $9,400 a month. If he returned for a second hitch after a three-month break, he’d get half pay for the months off — what the company referred to as a “loyalty bonus.”

Pine explored the island as he waited for the boat to come into port. The tropical weather was perfect, but Pine was struck by the vast piles of disintegrating water bottles and assorted plastic detritus that littered the shore.

After several days, the ship arrived. The Majestic Blue was an older boat, almost 200 feet long, the hull painted a deep blue and a massive net bundled at the stern. The outgoing captain gave Pine a quick tour. He was shown to his cabin, where he dropped his duffle, backpack, and guitar. The space was tiny and dingy. The toilet didn’t flush properly. The shower was just a cutoff hose. The whole ship seemed trashed, except for the fishing gear, which looked brand-new.

Pine was introduced to the crew — a mix of Korean, Indonesian, Filipino, and Vietnamese men. He was the only American on board. Among his charges was the fishing master, a Korean named Kyong Su Kim. Kim was about 5-foot-8, in his 30s, clean-shaven and muscular with deeply bronzed skin. Despite the heat, he wore a lightweight windbreaker with “Dongwon” printed on it. Pine noticed that no one called Kim by his name; they just referred to him as “fishing master.” Kim, Pine soon learned, had been captain of the ship until 15 months before, when it had been rechristened under the American flag.

Photographs of Majestic Blue by Doug Pine

As soon as the Majestic Blue was underway, Pine went down to the belly of the boat. He immediately noticed more problems. The watertight hatches to the engine and steering rooms were tied open, an outrageous violation of good marine practice and a sign of complacency on the part of the crew, he thought. He started crawling through the compartments, familiarizing himself with the layout of the engine room and the plant and the freezers. He wanted to look at them, touch them, trace the pipes and figure out what was where. As far as he could tell, no one who knew the systems spoke English. He’d figure them out for himself.

Pine was also eager to get to know the ship’s navigation systems and controls. But it was quickly made clear that he wasn’t expected to touch a thing in the wheelhouse. Every switch on the bridge was marked in Korean. The logs were in Korean; the computers had Korean keyboards; the wheelhouse computer was password-protected, and the Korean officers refused to give him the password. Pine couldn’t even turn the navigation lights on and off; he couldn’t tell which ones they were.

Pine was in the wheelhouse in front of the ship’s navigation radar one night less than a week into the trip. It was late, pitch-black outside, but the screen wasn’t tuned properly to look for traffic. Pine — who in his spare time taught classes in navigation technology at Seattle’s Pacific Maritime Institute — set out to clean it up. As soon as he started fiddling with the settings the fishing master rushed over and gave Pine a hard shove out of the way. “Do not touch!” he yelled. Pine was stunned. I’m the captain, I can do whatever I want to with the radar! But it was clear he was outnumbered, and that the culture of this ship — his ship — was against him. “It was like an alternative reality,” he recalls. “I’m captain, but I’m powerless.”