Hi, my name is Jonathan. I’m still a PhD student in National Chiao Tung University.

Also, I’m doing volunteer work with Stella Maris in Kaohsiung, a lot of volunteer work with FOSPI in Donggang, and also the visitors in Shenzhen.

Yes, Shenzhen. I’m doing consulting work for GeoGenera.

Maybe I can add something. I’m doing a lot of volunteer work for Stella Maris Kaohsiung, and also with FOSPI.

In the past two months, I’ve been in touch with two different fishing vessels. What happened in both vessels is that the crew from one vessel has not received salary for 10 months. So they just arrived in Mauritius. And another vessel with, I think, about 8 or 13 crew members, they haven’t received salaries for 14 months.

So the salary of the crew, sometimes they’re a same-age generation. They are supporting their parents and supporting their children and wives. So if they couldn’t receive money for 14 months, imagine the damage for the families.

The fishing agency says that the satellite phone is available on the fishing vessels. But they wouldn’t dare to touch the satellite phone or even just request the satellite phone to be used.

So we noticed that free Wi-Fi for all crews on fishing vessels is only the solution to solve the salary issues, which extend to other issues too, including forced labor, how they can be in touch with the outside world, how they can get mental support.

And we have been meeting with several fishers who have Wi-Fi on fishing vessels. They just arrived on fishing vessels. I talked with them in Indonesia, and we can see that from their face, they are healthy. They are fine, and they are good. They are better than the fishers who don’t have Wi-Fi.

So we talked with fishers who just arrived on land after 10 months on the ICs. Their faces are different. They are curious about what is happening. They are like, I need to get a SIM card as soon as possible. I need to get this, I need to get that, I need to get this. So they have been missing a lot of things.

We haven’t talked about the fishers who divorced. So many fishers got divorced because they lost contact with their families.

And I’m doing some media analysis from Facebook groups, where these fishers are usually grouped with each other.

So many parents, wives, and children are looking for their husband, their son. And they are asking, does anyone know these vessels? When is it coming to the port? And so on and so on.

I think this is the gap in our knowledge. We don’t understand the plight of these fishers when they are on the ICs for such a long time. We can only bridge this through Wi-Fi connections. That is what I want to say.

No, after 12 nautical miles.

1,000 to 1,500.

Yesterday I suddenly remembered that when we had a meeting with this association, the Fishermen Association. So, the whole association of employers yesterday was meeting with us together with the Fisheries Agency for the first time. So for long-liners, there are two associations. One is based in Donggang, and one is based in Kaohsiung. We have been asking them the same question: Can you provide Wi-Fi for the fishers?

And they clearly said it’s not the question of the cost, it’s the question of the use, how the fishers are going to use it. And then yesterday they said again, “If we want to give the fishers Wi-Fi access, we need to educate them on how to use the Wi-Fi.”

So, there are some huge fears from the employer side that letting these fishers communicate with the outside world might destroy their operation, their existing system that is captive and exploitative.

I think that’s the thing that we need to counter, too. How we need to educate the employer that letting them communicate will not destroy you overnight. If you are doing bad things, it might destroy you. But if you are doing the right thing, it just makes you better.

Keynote speaker, maybe?

Because of typhoon, a lot of vessels come here.

We just met with the vessels who just arrived from the high seas after 10 months.

11 months.

We talked about this Wi-Fi, a lot of excitement. Because last year we talked about Wi-Fi. They were saying impossible, impossible, impossible. And now they say, okay, let’s have it as soon as possible. They are changing process.

Yes, yes. We were able to meet 50 people in one night, in two groups, two different groups. 50 people, 50 people. Yeah.