TUKA, Philippines/MANILA — When the body of 25-year-old Filipino fisherman Sam Dela Cruz was returned to his shipmates after his sudden death in Somalia, they placed his body in the ship’s freezer to take him home to his family.

Their mourning was cut short the next day when armed Somali officers took Dela Cruz’s remains to bury him in a public cemetery in the port city of Bosaso, where their Chinese-flagged fishing vessel, the Han Rong 355, was docked in 2018, according to Gilbert, another Filipino on the ship who used a pseudonym due to safety concerns.

Dela Cruz was one of the 66,000 or more Filipinos deployed on foreign fishing vessels over the past decade, according to the Philippines’ Department of Migrant Workers (DMW), part of a global business worth $140 billion.

Official data showed more than 40% of Filipino migrant fishers are repatriated by the government when their contracts expire or they are subject to ship abandonment or mistreatment.

But deaths like Dela Cruz’s are under-documented, and researchers said it is difficult to determine how many perish in an industry they call poorly regulated and rife with abuse.

SICK AT SEA
Seven years after this death, Dela Cruz’s parents are still waiting for his remains in the village of Tuka in Sultan Kudarat province in the Philippines.

“I really cannot sleep, and I feel like I’m going crazy. I can’t eat much, because my mind is still with Sam,” his mother Roselyn said.

Dela Cruz applied for overseas work in 2017 with the recruitment agency GMM Global Maritime Manila and, in early 2018, flew to Singapore, where ship-management services firm GMH Global Maritime Holding was based. He was quickly deployed onto the Han Rong 355.

Attempts to contact GMH Global Maritime were unsuccessful. A Singapore online business directory lists it as “struck off” the registry.

Medical records from 2013 to 2017 showed Dela Cruz was healthy and certified fit for sea duty. But after reaching Somalia in June, he began limping and complained of pain in his stomach and thigh.

A month later, he was rushed to the National Hospital Bosaso and died there on July 28, 2018, succumbing to cardiac arrest due to septic shock and multiple organ failure, hospital records showed.

A Han Rong 355 agent filed a burial request with a Somali court the day after Dela Cruz’s death, and he was buried the same day, according to documents analysed by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, which was unable to determine and contact the owner of the Han Rong 355.

GMM Manila took three days to report Dela Cruz’s death to the government, which may have delayed official efforts to claim the body.

“The repatriation of remains is a deeply humanitarian issue reflecting our shared respect for the deceased and their grieving family,” said Robert Ferrer Jr., assistant secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs’ Office of Migrant Workers Affairs.

The Philippine Embassy in Nairobi in July revived negotiations with Somali authorities to bring Dela Cruz’s remains home after GMM Manila’s efforts ended in 2019.

GMM Manila did not respond to requests for comment.

But Marlon Martija, a former welfare officer at GMM Manila who handled Dela Cruz’s case, said the company understood the matter was resolved when the family signed a settlement agreement with compensation of about $35,000.

‘NEFARIOUS OPERATORS’
Dominic Thomson, deputy director and project manager for Southeast Asia with the Britain-based human rights group Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), said burials on land or at sea are a practice by “nefarious operators.

“It’s almost up to the discretion of the captain whether they go back to port or take a detour from the fishing grounds to make sure that a fisher can get home or get to a hospital in time,” he said.

A Chinese fisher on the ship died about a month after Dela Cruz, Gilbert said. He was buried beside Dela Cruz’s grave in Somalia, documents showed.

Then Gilbert and other crew members on the Han Rong 355 began exhibiting symptoms after they were given “murky water” he said “tasted like metal.”

Nante Maglangit, 35, worked on board other vessels called Han Rong. Like Gilbert, he described an illness in which his legs swelled, coupled with vomiting.

Neither was diagnosed nor received medical attention. A doctor shown Dela Cruz’s hospital records was unable to determine what had caused his death.

GAPS IN PROTECTION
Maglangit fished on Chinese vessels for two years without adequate meals and water, nor full payment of his salary. He and his crewmates were abandoned at sea in 2021 when the COVID-19 pandemic prevented their boat from docking.

In 2022, a Philippine court ordered Maglangit’s recruiter and a China-based shipping company to pay him about $5,000 for contract violations.

Hussein Macarambom, national coordinator for the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Ship to Shore Rights Southeast Asia project, said “a mix of patchy or overlapping jurisdictions” among countries in the fishing industry makes enforcing worker protections difficult.

The EJF, which has interviewed more than 200 Filipino migrant fishers, compared recruitment practices in the Philippines and Indonesia to a “black market.”

Four fishermen who worked on Chinese vessels told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that they were forced to work for up to 18 hours a day fishing, freezing and packing their catch that included squid, tuna and mackerel.

“It’s akin to human trafficking,” said Thomson. “It’s a completely unregulated industry in a lot of aspects.”

Labour activists have called on the Philippines to join the ILO’s Work in Fishing Convention that sets basic labour standards for the industry.

But Dela Cruz’s family just wants to bury their son.

“Our only wish is for Sam’s bones to come home,” his father Samson said. “So his mother can move on. She cannot have closure if her son isn’t here.” — Thomson Reuters Foundation