In the middle of the ocean: thousands of sailors are stranded on abandoned ships around the globe.

Thousands of sailors remain aboard their vessels in foreign waters, without pay, with meager supplies, and no way to return home. This is reported by The Guardian, whose journalists managed to speak with the abandoned seafarers.

One of the heroes of the article is Vihan, a marine engineer from India, who has been stuck aboard the tugboat Navimar 3 since 2024. The ship, which he was supposed to be on for a few months, set sail for Bangladesh with a cargo of stone but was detained by authorities due to unpaid fees.

Vihan's passport and certification documents are held by the managing company in Dubai, along with the documents of the entire crew. They survive solely on supplies from charity organizations and unions.

Vihan's case is far from unique. Thousands of sailors, the backbone of global shipping trade, are left to fend for themselves in what the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) describes as a "cancerous growth" in the industry. The number of incidents has increased by 135%, from 132 vessels in 2023 to 312 last year, affecting over 3,000 sailors, according to a joint database of the ITF/International Labour Organization (ILO).

The highest number of abandoned vessels was in the Middle East region—108, with the flag state having the most being the United Arab Emirates, where 42 ships were abandoned in 2024. Turkey ranked second with 25. UAE companies also bear the largest share of all abandoned vessels.

Seafarers in the ITF/ILO database often remained without food or with very little, and with dirty drinking water, while a debt of $20 million owed to them remained unpaid in 2024, of which the ITF has already recovered $10.4 million. According to the ITF, the situation for one crew member in distress became so severe that he was hospitalized after a failed suicide attempt.

These sailors find themselves in a deadlock: unable to return home, they remain aboard under worsening conditions, hoping that the employers who owe them wages will pay them, as their chances of receiving unpaid wages diminish once they leave the vessel.

The majority of abandoned ships sail under the flags of "flags of convenience," such as Panama or Palau. This system allows shipowners to register a vessel in a country different from their own, often with less stringent labor laws, complicating the process of filing lawsuits against shipowners.

Another alarming aspect of the industry is the growing danger for sailors who inadvertently find themselves caught in conflicts. This was underscored in November 2023, when 25 crew members of the cargo ship Galaxy Leader, flagged in the Bahamas, were taken hostage by Yemeni Houthi rebels in the Red Sea, linked to the war in the Gaza Strip. They were released only last month.

And in July of last year, 16 sailors were abandoned aboard the cargo ship Captain Tarek during Israeli airstrikes on the port of Hodeidah in Yemen. They survived on one serving of rice per day and one liter of dirty water. Some of them were able to return home to Syria and India.