The Outlaw Ocean Institute

Virginia Gascón is an independent consultant based in Patagonia, Argentina that specializes in International Ocean Law and Policy. She has consulted for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC), and UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), among others.

Roisai Wongsuban is a human rights advocate and independent consultant in Thailand. Over the past decade, she has worked on behalf of migrants, refugees, displaced persons, asylum seekers, and survivors of human trafficking. Her work focuses especially on bringing long-term structural change to address the human rights abuses faced by migrant women. She holds an M.A in Migration Studies from the University of Sussex, where she received a Chevening Scholarship, and a master’s degree in International Development from Monash University.

Wongsuban’s professional career in human rights advocacy began during an internship at Project Respect, a community organisation assisting trafficked women in Melbourne, Australia. In this role, Wongsuban built coalitions to push for reform and stronger enforcement for the litigation of trafficking cases, universal birth registration, education for all, immigration management and other policy initiatives. She also worked as a Trafficking in Persons Adviser for Australia – Asia, which focused on strengthening law enforcement to prosecute offenders and protect victims of trafficking; as country manager for iCare Benefit Thailand, which provided alternative welfare for blue collar workers; as a migration expert for the International Organisation for Migration and Senior Advocacy Coordinator, overseeing the Thailand portfolio; and as program advisor for the Thailand hotspot of Freedom Fund.

Eloy Aroni Sulca is a Quechua-speaking Peruvian fisheries investigator and ocean governance specialist. Born in the Andean mountains of Ayacucho and raised in the coastal city of Lima, his work reflects a trajectory from the highlands to the sea, where he focuses on fisheries transparency, labor abuses at sea, and the activities of distant-water fishing fleets in the South Pacific.

Using satellite tracking, vessel monitoring data, and field investigations, Aroni has documented illegal fishing, seafood traceability challenges, and human rights concerns linked to industrial fishing operations. He is Director of Fisheries at ArtisOnal and has previously worked with international NGOs including Global Fishing Watch, Oceana, and C4ADS. He is also the founder of SIMON, a monitoring and traceability platform designed to strengthen accountability in small-scale fisheries.

Aroni has published and collaborated with regional and international media outlets such as The Associated Press, Mongabay, and Ojo Público, as well as other local media, reporting on fisheries, transparency, and labor conditions at sea. His recent investigations have examined the case of six Peruvian crew members recruited to work aboard a Chinese squid vessel who later alleged exploitation and abuse, combining testimonies, maritime data, and policy analysis to expose systemic gaps in oversight and protection. Through his work, Aroni seeks to reveal the hidden human and environmental costs of the global seafood industry.

Federico Brum is a seasoned interpreter and translator with over fifteen years of experience working across diplomatic, legal, and international cooperation settings. A Certified Public Translator (Universidad de la República, Uruguay), he holds a Master’s in Biosanitary Translation (Universidad Menéndez Pelayo, Spain) and a Postgraduate Certificate in Court Interpretation (University of Buenos Aires).

Federico has served as the personal interpreter for the U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay (2019–2021) and currently works as an interpreter for the President of the Republic and the Uruguayan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In parallel, he works as a Court Interpreter and provides translation services to international institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank and the Latin American Energy Organization. Since 2021, he has also collaborated with The Outlaw Ocean Project, bringing linguistic precision and cultural nuance to stories that cross borders.

In addition to his professional practice, Federico coordinates the Public Translation courses at the School of Law, Universidad de la República, where he also teaches advanced courses in English and foreign language proficiency.

Omar Hama Saley is a Nigerian journalist. He worked at Mali Web TV and Sahelien.com as a correspondent in Niamey, Niger.

Saley works for a variety of international media on the themes of security and illegal migration. He became a stringer at the Deutsche Welles Academy in 2015 and, at the same time, worked as a correspondent for the program "Nos Histoires Africaines" in Niamey, Niger. Additionally, Saley’s work has been published in The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and also for institutions such as the UNHCR.

In 2016, Saley received the first national prize from the Maison de la Presse in Niger. Today, he is recognized as one of the most prominent young journalists in Niger.

Pierre Kattar is an Emmy award-winning video journalist and documentary filmmaker. He began at The Washington Post in 1999 where he filmed, edited, reported, wrote and narrated news stories for the newspaper's website.

In 2010, Pierre left the Post and worked with clients like The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker Magazine, PBS’s Frontline, The World Bank Group, UNICEF and many more. He has produced short films on the election of President Barack Obama, the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks in Paris, Black Lives Matter in Italy and he was part of a team investigating the killing of a young migrant in Lybia’s secret prisons.

Tokam Martin Luther (a.k.a. Kamto) was born in the western region of Cameroon. He attended French/Cameroonian bilingual school in the city of Bertoua. There, he finished high school in Bafoussam and passed the baccalaureate exam in science. After studying for two years at the University of Dschang in Cameroon, he attended a professional training course for electrical engineering and earned a certificate.

From 2011 to 2018, Kamto worked for a company that specialized in energy distribution in Cameroon. In 2019, he embarked on a two-and-a-half year odyssey to Europe. On October 6th, 2021, Kamto left his home and made his way through the Sahara Desert to Libya, traveled across the Mediterranean Sea and finally reached Italy. He currently lives in Modena, Italy. Kamto works as a stocker at a local store and is studying to become an Italian-certified electrical engineer.

Pete McKenzie is a freelance journalist from New Zealand who covers the Pacific for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian, among other outlets.

At the 2023 Voyager Media Awards, he was named Reporter of the Year: New Zealand's highest journalistic honor. McKenzie has a Master’s degree in global politics and journalism from Columbia University, where he studied on a Fulbright scholarship.

Carlos Shanka is an award-winning sustainability enthusiast from the Canary Islands, Spain. He has pursued this passion while a student at the University of Bristol by representing his country at high-level UN Conferences and interning at the United Nations Development Programme.

Shanka is part of local, regional, and global climate networks such as ClientEarth, European Climate Pact Ambassadors, and Climate Reality. He serves as the founder and curator of Global Shapers, Las Palmas, a pivotal NGO in the Canary Islands rising to the challenge of looming environmental issues.

Milko Schvartzman is a Marine Conservation Campaigner from Argentina. He specializes in ocean policy, human rights, IUU fishing, investigative research, and at-sea satellite tracking.

Schvartzman was the Campaign Coordinator for Greenpeace Argentina from 1999 - 2003 and for Greenpeace International from 2003 - 2015, where he contributed to Greenpeace expeditions on Whaling, Fishing and Pollution in areas such as Antarctica, the North Sea, the South Pacific, and the South Atlantic. During this period, he also worked on campaigns in Argentina, Belize, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Venezuela, Suriname and Uruguay.

Schvartzman was spokesperson at the Rio+20 Summit in 2012, the UN-BBNJ in New York in 2013 - 2015, the International Whaling Commission in 2001 - 2014 and the World Trade Organization in 2017. From 2018 - 2019, he was the Project Coordinator for Oceanosanos. Presently, Schvartzman is the Ocean Policy Coordinator for the Círculo de Políticas Ambientales and the Maritime Affairs Commission Advisor at the Argentina National Congress.

Gaea Katreena Cabico is a journalist with Philstar.com, an online news outlet based in Manila, Philippines. She has been writing stories focused on marginalized people, development-induced displacement and those affected by and adapting to climate change since 2019. Cabico has covered watershed degradation and the deforestation of Philippine forests, specifically the Sierra Madre Mountain Range in Luzon, as well as initiatives of surrounding communities to restore these wooded areas. In her ongoing reporting, she continues to explore the impacts of fossil gas projects, mining activities, reclamation projects, dam projects, and attacks on environmental defenders in the Philippines.

During her professional career, Cabico has been a fellow at Earth Journalism Network, Stanley Center for Peace and Security, Climate Tracker, Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Journalism Fund, United Nations Human Rights Office Southeast Asia Regional Office, and UN Women. In 2020, she was one of the top 10 finalists for the Journalism for an Equitable Asia Award for her story about the human and environmental costs of an airport project in Manila Bay. Her reporting honed in on the destructive influence of the plan on the natural environs, food security and the livelihoods of the local fisherman of the Bulacan province.

Min Kyi Thein began his journalism career in Myanmar in 2012 as a freelance cameraman for Global Media Services. He joined Associated Press Television News (APTN) in a similar capacity in 2014, covering national breaking news and politics. While shooting video for APTN, Thein witnessed conflicts between Myanmar’s army and the Rohingya in Rakhine State. He covered the plight of internally displaced people in the wake of these tensions. Over a period of several years, Thein also worked on stories involving the return of ex-slaves to Myanmar, the restriction of the rights of Rohingya fishermen, the illegal logging trade in central Myanmar and various natural disasters around the country.

After chronicling events in Myanmar for seven years, Thein received an offer from Channel News Asia (CNA), based in Singapore, to be a videographer for domestic and international news. When Myanmar’s army staged a coup in 2021, the intrepid Thein requested to be assigned to the CNA Myanmar Bureau based in Yangon. Since that time, he has been carefully navigating the delicate terrain of the military state in Myanmar through the lens of his video camera.

Mustapha Manneh is a freelance journalist based in The Gambia. For the past five years, Manneh has been writing stories about fishmeal factories in The Gambia and Senegal, with a focus on the community impact of these factories and the local resistance to them. His reporting has also highlighted the tenuous China-Africa relations that color the process of fishmeal investment in Africa. Manneh currently freelances for China Dialogue as West Africa Regional Editor. He is particularly interested in environmental pollution, marine biodiversity, ocean policy and the Africa-China relationship.

Manneh is Editor in Chief of Kartong Weekly News, a community social media online newspaper, and founder of Their Voice Must Be Heard, a youth-led human rights non-profit organization supporting the needy and advocating for social justice in The Gambia.

In addition, Manneh has worked with a variety of non-governmental and civil society organizations including: Greenpeace Africa, Amnesty International, Environmental Justice Foundation, Mbolo Association, National Youth Council, and Innovators Spaces. He was also a consultant for The World Bank.