Episode 1: 500 Miles from shore

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You're about to listen to the first episode of Lost at Sea, a deep dive into the murky depths of the global fishing industry. If you want to hear more, the whole series will be available from the 22nd of November, wherever you get your podcast. But if you're in the UK, you can hear it all right now, before anywhere else, first on BBC sounds.

I remember, and it it still makes me a bit emotional now to to talk about it and think about it, but I was talking with a colleague soon after it happened in the office. And and he asked me, he's like, Well, uh how are you? Are you okay? Do you need to go home? And And I said, um, the thing that kills me is to imagine him over the side of the ship. Watching the ship sail off into the distance, and knowing that there was no one there, and his fate was sealed at that point.

I couldn't imagine that sense of loneliness and and that sense of of you know your your your ultimate fate being sealed like that, watching that vessel go away. The message said, you know, s something happened to Keith that uh, you know, he they can't find him. And what went through your head? Oh my god, yeah, just like drop in my stomach, the gut in the chest of just like being hit with a A Mac truck or something.

And then I I had to know I had to find out answers like what what's going on. That's what really drove me. I was like, this has to be fixed, this has to stop. The fact that we're so willing to just allow stuff like that to happen and not think twice about it and the things that we buy. You know, whether it's fish or clothes or or whatever. If we can fix that, let's fix it. And let's make sure no one has to live through this kind of thing again. I'm Rachel Monroe. And this is episode one.

Five hundred miles Okay, I'm Keith Davis. I'm doing a comparison of uh Marlin here. Um this is uh a blue marlin here. I'm not uh I'm watching this video of a man called Keith Davis. Uh it's September twenty fifteen and he's somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Keith's a wiry, eager guy in his forties, from Arizona. Then here we're uh we have uh the strike marlin. He's standing on the deck of a boat called the Victoria 168.

Keith has spent his life on boats. He fell in love with the sea as a child, spending his days fishing and exploring bays near Boston. The Victoria one hundred sixty eight is a working boat, and it looks worse for wear. The green paint on the deck is flecking off in some places and it's spotted with rust in others. Keith's shadow flits across a heap of dead fish.

Their heads and tails have been chopped off. To me, all the carcasses look exactly the same. But Keith's sharper eye can tell the fish apart. And here is a black marlin. You see the black, uh the really dark blue dorsal side. Keith is working as a fisheries observer. It's this strange, little known job that I'd never come across before.

Like if you were sitting next to somebody on an airplane or something and they asked you, you know, Fisheries Observer, what is that? Like what is what is this job? What do they do? A fisheries observer is a trained Biologist, sometimes marine biologist, who knows about the species in the ocean that our governments are trying to protect in order to keep the fish stocks sustainable. Anite Clemens became an observer just after she graduated with a marine biology degree in two thousand one.

It's the same path that Keith took. He became an observer after studying evolutionary biology in the late 90s. I was a new biologist and I was working in the field which was huge and I was making good money. I was making two hundred dollars a day. So when you go out to sea for thirty days and you come home with six thousand dollars in your bank account as a twenty two year old, that's you know, that's pretty nice.

Fisheries Observer will collect the data on what fish is caught, what gear is used, what protected species, if there's protected species from that country. observers are not part of the crew, but it almost feels like you are because you're sleeping in the same bunk rooms, you're eating the same food. You're working the same hours, you're out on the deck in your foul weather gear, like all the other fishermen. You're out there with everybody else.

when they're pulling up a fish, you're right there ready to identify it, measure it, take samples. When they're throwing out the gear, you're out there making sure that All the gears accounted for. If they need to dye their bait blue, that they're dying their bait blue. It's it's really a a data collection job. Now that's not how fisheries observers are seen. By the fishermen. They're seen as sea police people, and that can be where a lot of risk and and danger.

can come into play and uh see how similar they look and how they differ. That video of Keith with the Marlins is the last known recording of his voice. Days after he filmed it. He disappeared.

I'm a reporter based in the dusty high desert of West Texas. Eight hours from any ocean. I've written about crime and fires and motorcycles and haunted houses. And I've learned that when you dig into a story, you can find yourself in some pretty unexpected places. So far, all the stories that I've covered have taken place on land, but 70% of our world is ocean.

That's what actually drew me to this strange world of observers and fishing vessels and the potential for lawlessness out on the high seas. Trying to find answers about Keith isn't going to be easy. I'm recording this nearly seven years since his disappearance, and there are still so many questions. The most pressing one, how could this have happened?

The work of fisheries observers was completely new to me, so I needed a guide, someone who could explain how it all works. I got obsessed with fishing when I was uh about 12 years old. I was fishing every weekend, going to the lakes. going to rivers. You know, I've always been interested in the sea, always been interested in the ocean. Ricky was an observer on a vessel similar to Keith. The last boat that Keith was on, that we know of, was the Victoria one six eight.

It was part of a tuna fishing fleet operating out of Panama. It's what they call a transshipment vessel, or a reefer. It collects the catch from longliners, which are smaller fishing boats. Ricky can explain. The transshipment vessels are Essentially a refrigerated cargo vessel decked out with freezers that freeze to minus 60 and that's that's to preserve sashimi grade fish. Ricky took this job just out of college and Ricky isn't his real name. He wanted to use an alias.

Which says a lot about the fear of reprisals in the world of transshipment. And then towards the back of the vessel you have like the supplies that are gonna get transferred onto the fishing vessels, crew, fuel, food and then cigarettes. Loads and loads of cigarettes. As the reefer comes alongside the fishing boat. You basically jump in a big net and you transfer via a crane to the longline vessels. You heard that right. Ricky jumps in a net and transfers via a crane to the longline vessels.

Vessel. It is not a job for the faint hearted. fishing license, you check the authorization to transship. When all of that's done, you transfer back over to Transshipment vessel and watch tuna be craned over. This is the kind of exhausting, exhilarating physical work that Keith would have been doing every day. So the tuna are strung together using rope. sixty to eighty of these in a string.

The job of the observer is to count these tuner in mid-air as they're flying across from one vessel to the other. They've been gutted and gilled so their tails have been removed, their fins have been removed, all the colours. gone because they've been deep frozen, there's a frost on the outside of them.

You count just using a a clicker in your your hands, you know, the kind of thing that a bouncer uses at a nightclub to count how many people are going in and out. Ricky would do this 60, 70 times in one trip, loading the reefer with more and more frozen. And tuna. That allows the longliners to stay out there on the high seas, fishing non-stop. And it can pay off. A single bluefin tuna can sell for thousands of dollars.

So the fishing vessels without transshipment would only be able to do between a one and three month trip maximum. What the transshipment vessel does is, you know, gives them the fuel, gives them the bait, gives them the food. and does crew exchanges so that they can stay long enough for up to a year. And I think the longest I've heard of is a vessel staying continuously at sea for 10 years. Ten years without coming to shore.

This is the world that Keith lived in. A world that's so foreign to me. Kind of romantic, kind of scary. The sea, the ships, those cranes hoisting tons of tuna.

A lot of observers give it up after their twenties, like Ricky. Then they move on to something safer, more stable work that gives them a chance to build a life onshore. But Keith well, his life was more on sea than on land. These days, Anite Clemens is working as a life coach in Florida, but in her 20s, she was addicted to adventure. She met Keith in Hawaii in two thousand one. I don't know if it was my first trip or my second trip.

I was going to the gear shop to pick up my gear to go out to see. He was offloading his kit and putting his kit away and I remember him wearing The foul weather gear with like these awful orange pants. Scraggly brown hair but tan skin and you know, no shirt and just these these overalls and he like looks back at me and I'm like

Well that's a seasoned observer right there. It was hard to make solid plans, but they'd catch up with each other as friends when they were both on shore. And then in 2014 it developed into something more. I was going to Hawaii to Kauai for a a ten ten day paddleboarding adventure. And he was like, Oh heck yeah, I'm in, let's do this. So we just had such a blast. Um Shared a tent and uh and that's kinda where our romance started was in Kawaii.

It's like how do you not fall in love, you know? Right? It was very magical. And then he flew back to Arizona. packed up a truck with all of his stuff and drove it to Florida. So I thought he was coming for a visit. And he decided he was gonna come and live with me. Was that like in keeping with his personality? Was he like impulsive and romantic like that or what? Oh yeah, he was all of the above. Like, oh, this you know, this is such a great idea. I'll just come live with you

It didn't really work out, but they managed to stay friends and to keep in touch. I think whoever he dated had a really hard time with him not being there and when he was there, oh him always wanting to be out at sea. The sea kept bringing him back. And did you talk to him before um before this last trip in twenty fifteen? I did. I talked to him around the fourth of July. He called me to wish me a f happy fourth of July. It was right before he went out to see maybe even the day before.

Yeah, it was like hope you have a great trip. Um, good luck. And it was It was like any other trip. He was in bright spirits. I was in bright spirits. I was excited for him. We just caught up on a And then I wished him luck.

Two months later Yeah. Something had happened to Keith. I don't remember. exactly the first message and I d and I don't remember who it was from. But I just remember getting swept up in it right away. You know, didn't sleep, had to figure out what what happened, who knew what, how could I help. Keith's friends were constantly checking their phones, calling observer friends to see if any of the people who are not going to be able to Yeah.

Family members and others that were holding out hope is that well maybe he's just hiding on board. Yeah, over the other. You know how in a crisis there's always one person who's like the hub connecting everyone and relaying all the information? Well, here it was Bubba Cook. Bubba grew up around fish on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Now he works for the World Wildlife Fund, and he seems to know everyone in the fisheries world.

We wanted to keep the the family informed through Facebook posts, which you know we've we've kept those Facebook posts as a as a record. This is Bubba reading his posts. Fourteenth September twenty fifteen. Hi all. This is from MRAG America. Keith's employer. The MV Victoria number 168 completed its 72-hour search for Keith at 1730 hours U.S. Central With no result. We broadcasted distress alert to nearby ships and none of them reported back about the missing person.

Eighty-four square miles of ocean were covered during three days of surface. Keith's continuing disappearance is hugely upsetting for all of us. We are still hoping that he will be found. Sixteenth September The Victoria number one hundred sixty eight is now steaming directly to Panama and is expected to arrive on Sunday, september twenty fifth. We continue to hope and pray for Keith's safe return.

September twenty. The boat has arrived in Panama as of a few hours ago, and appears to be anchored in the port. The investigation is being led by the Panamanian authorities with the U.S. authorities participating. The investigation team was on board on Monday from about 9.30 a.m. until about 5 p.m. conducting searches and interviews. Bubba could only imagine what might have happened on board the Victoria one six eight.

You know, because he was an observer that had sixteen years of service, he was working on a vessel that had armpit high gunwolves, um I mean we we wrote the observer safety and security uh manual together. Yeah, and there was no question in my mind that he was as professional and as careful and safe an observer as anyone could be.

You know, and the extreme unlikelihood that uh he might have tripped and fallen overboard or something like that, um the inevitable conclusion is is that something had to have happened to him. To this day, I'm I'm convinced that you know he saw something that people didn't want him to see. Bubba's speculating here, of course. We haven't seen any evidence to support his theory of a crew member murdering Keith. We approached the Gelantis group.

The company that owned the Victoria 168 to comment on Keith's case, but they didn't respond. They've previously said, quote, We have no comments on the disappearance of observer Keith Davis since there is a case Still open on that matter. However, please be informed that the Gelantis group has cooperated with the authorities that conducted the investigation.

When a person goes missing on land, there's hope. Maybe they'll turn up years later, or someone will stumble on a body, or the police will find a clue. fabric or a cigarette butt that can be sampled for DNA. But when someone's missing at sea, you're just left with absence. 13 November 2015. Took a gut punch this morning when I opened Skype and Keith's name popped up as online. Birthday announcement. and all the other observers that have served, are currently serving, or will serve in the future.

On land, so much of our life is captured by cameras and tracked by our devices. We're all so monitored, so identified, so visible. But what haunts Keith's friends still is just how invisible his death was. And there's something that makes it even worse. Keith's death is not the only one of the observer community that we lost in a similar way. So there had been several beforehand, several after him.

For the most part, they have remained a mystery. There are some that we can attribute to an injury, or you know, they were found in the cabin dead. makes it even more risky to know this could happen to you. Keith's death wasn't a wild. Other observers have died at sea under suspicion of the world. Charlie Lasisi, Eritara Asi Kaiura, Arnold La Tu. One of the bigger problems over the years is is we just simply don't know how many observers have been lost. Just here in the Pacific.

It's been about one observer a year. And that's only when we started keeping records. And since I started making this podcast in 2021, another two observers have died on the job. And, you know, that should be disturbing. I mean imagine if floor managers at an old Navy store, you know, started getting knocked off folding shirts on the floor.

Only eight across the entire United States over ten years, but wouldn't you want to address that? Wouldn't you be concerned about that? You know, we don't seem to have that same level of sensitivity. That's next time, on Lost at Sea. And we couldn't believe it, that he would just fall overboard. Uh because you know, he was a good observer and he was very safety conscious. that they didn't want him to see.

Lost at Sea is a BBC Studios factual podcast unit production for BBC Five Live and BBC Sounds. It's presented by me, Rachel Monroe. The series producer is Monica Whitlock. Sound design and music by John Nichols. The executive producer is Paul Smith. The commissioning executive for BBC is Dylan Haskins. If you enjoyed this episode of the video, you can see that the video is a

Whole series will be available from the 22nd of November wherever you get your podcasts. But if you're in the UK, you can hear it all right now, first on BBC Sounds. Take a deeper dive into the mystery of Keith's disappearance. Local time on the boat, it was four. They declared him missing, but they indicated that He was down in his cabin before the Of the transshipment. And that doesn't ring true to me. Discover the problems of investigating something that happened miles from land.

you know of of what happened to see is challenging. Very easily washes evidence away. Yeah. DNA evidence is hard to collect. And find out where the investigation leads. I I know a lot of people have speculated about what Keith could have seen. To this day I'm I'm convinced that you know he saw something that people didn't want him to see. If you're in the UK, you can hear it all right now, first and for free, on the BBC Sounds app.

Det finns bara en plats där det här känns rimligt. Nu alla filmer från 99 kronor på filmstaden.