My name is Ian Urbina. I am the director of The Outlaw Ocean Project, a journalism organization based in Washington, D.C., in the United States, and I'm working on a magazine story about labor issues and other crimes at sea on board vessels of the Chinese fishing fleet. We are reaching out to request a reply from the captain of the Jinhanyu 4879, which we mention in the story, to our statements below.

A diary kept by a Chinese deckhand, publishing by Henan Legal News, states the following:

1. In May, 2013, the Chinese deckhand paid a manning agency a two-hundred-dollar recruitment fee, which…