Spending a year as a fisherman seemed like a good option to Samart Senasook regardless of the long hours and hard work.
Previous jobs as a security guard in Bangkok had been sporadic, so when a man known as Vee promised the 40-year old decent wages on a fishing boat he decided to take the chance.
Vee eventually turned out to be a broker, a link in the chain of human trafficking that supplies the Thai fishing industry with thousands of migrant workers and turns many of them into virtual slaves.
Instead of a year on board a Thai fishing vessel, Senasook said he spent six, and was made to work 20-hour days in life-threatening conditions.
His unwanted odyssey only came to an end last month, thousands of miles from Thailand, on the eastern Indonesian island of Ambon.
"There were times I was about to jump into the sea to kill myself."
The boat he was on was impounded by Indonesian authorities for suspected illegal fishing, with Senasook and his crew-mates held in custody.
Narrating his ordeal, he says lasted from January 2009 to March 2015, Senasook rarely saw land, as the boat he was on roamed further and further from Thai waters in search of increasingly scarce fish.
Its catch was part of Thailand's multi-billion dollar seafood industry that feeds tens of millions in Europe and the United States.
Senasook describes his life on board as one full of intimidation, sleep deprivation and regular beatings from the boat's captain.
"The captain kicked and punched me," he said. "My nose and mouth were bleeding. I still have blood clotted in my teeth. My jaw hurts every time I chew."
With no escape route, he became suicidal.
"I was thinking of my family, my mother. There were times, I was about to jump into the sea to kill myself.
"My friend from the engine room held me back. Otherwise I would have been dead by now," he said.
Senasook says the boat's captain kept his and the crew's ID at all times, essentially holding them captive.
When Senasook did finally get his hands on his identity card on Ambon, he was horrified to see it was in a false name. He had gone from being captive on board a fishing boat to being stranded on a distant island.
"There are many of my friends die in Indonesia. And their graves were with wrong names," said Senasook. "Like, if I died, at my grave it would not bear my name but it would be someone else."
In desperation, he wrote an open letter to the Thai Prime Minister asking for help. That helped to release him from Indonesian custody, but, isolated and penniless, he could not make his way home to Thailand.
He received a final payment of 1,750 baht ($53) from his ship's captain, but was then told he needed to pay 20,000 baht ($615) for the agent fee that brought him on the boat in 2009.
Eventually he received assistance from Thai-based Labor Rights Promotion Network (LPN) and was repatriated to Thailand last month.
He was one of the more fortunate ones. The LPN discovered a similar situation on the nearby island of Benjina, where the group says hundreds of other fishermen from across Southeast Asia were trapped and living in desperate conditions.
Patima Tangpratyakoon, of the Labor Rights Promotion Network
The rights group estimates there could be up to 3,000 trafficked victims working on boats in these seas.
"The fishermen on Ambon and Benjina have forged or no documents so can't return home," said the LPN's Patima Tangpratyakoon. "The situation is severe."
But the problem of modern day slaves fishing for seafood that ends up on dinner plates on the other side of the world goes much further than these tiny Indonesian islands.
The extent of the situation is hard to gauge. Thai government figures state that there are 145,000 working in its fishing industry, with 80% of those migrant workers, mainly from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. However, activist group Raks Thai Foundation suggests there are in excess of 200,000 trafficked, unregistered workers.
The question now is can Thailand tackle the crisis in its fishing industry?
Source: CNN
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