Lost at Sea

“Abdul Nasser Saleh says he rarely got a good night’s sleep during the near-decade he spent working without pay on a cargo ship abandoned by its owner at ports along the Red Sea. By night, he tossed and turned in his bunk on the aging Al-Maha, he said, thinking of the unpaid wages he feared he’d never get if he left the ship. By day he paced the deck, stuck for the last two years in the seaport of Jeddah, unable to set foot on land because of Saudi Arabia’s strict immigration laws … Saleh’s plight is part of a global problem that shows no signs of abating.” Last year, more than 150 large ships were just abandoned by their owners, wherever they may have been at the moment. These moves often left crew members stranded on board. For years. Stuck at sea for years, a sailor’s plight highlights a surge in shipowner abandonment.