A Shipwreck Killed 41 Crew and 5,900 Cattle. The Brutal Business Behind It Goes On

The sinking of the Gulf Livestock 1 was an existential moment for farm animal exporters. Some of those lessons are being forgotten. By Andrew S Lewis

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
A shipwreck killed forty one crew and fifty nine hundred cattle.
The brutal business behind it goes on. The sinking of
the Gulf live Stock I was an existential moment for
farm animal exporters. Some of those lessons are being forgotten
by Andrew S. Lewis read aloud by Mark Liedorf. Captain

(00:22):
Dante Adug must have been uneasy thinking about the forty
eight hours to come. It was August thirtieth, twenty twenty,
and his ship, the Gulf Livestock I, was steaming into
the path of Mysuk, a Category four typhoon that was
hurtling up the Philippine Sea with one hundred and thirty
mile per hour winds and twenty foot waves. Even the
sturdiest cargo ship would take a beating in such conditions,

(00:45):
but for the Gulf Mysuk almost certainly promised catastrophe. The
Gulf was due to arrive in Tangshan, a massive port
complex about a hundred miles from Beijing, in four days.
It was the height of pandemic gridlock in port around
the world, especially in China, where ships often waited more
than two days to offload. For a vessel full of appliances,

(01:07):
car parts, or electronics. Such a delay would be little
more than an inconvenience, But for the Gulf, which carried
a shifting, easily frightened cargo of five thousand, eight hundred
and sixty seven dairy cattle, every extra day at anchor
heightened the risk of the animals becoming ill or dying,
and of costing the exporter and shipowner money. The Gulf

(01:28):
was trying to make its way through the shipping lanes
around Japan's Southern Archipelago, the gateway between the Philippine Sea
and the East China Sea. Almost every day, hundreds of
cargo ships coming to or from China, Japan, South Korea,
or Taiwan passed through these lanes. By August thirty first,
virtually every other vessel in the region had re routed

(01:49):
around the storm or was doing so. The Gulf was
alone in a swathe of ocean that stretched hundreds of
nautical miles. In a message, the ship's Hamburg based manager,
marked Consul Chiffart, instructed Adug to proceed on a safe
passage to the destination. After this delivery, the young captain
was scheduled to return home to the Philippines to meet

(02:10):
his four month old son for the first time. He
pressed on, following the scheduled route. Around eight pm on
September first, the Gulf's engines failed. The ship began swinging
broadside into the swell. Two crew Australian William main Prize
and New Zealander Scott Harris, communicated the chaos to their
families and friends on messaging apps. At least two decks

(02:33):
completely washed out. Harris texted hundreds of cattle were likely
already injured or dead. Soon water was rushing into the
engine room. Main Prize and Harris ventured out into the
hallway On one deck. Harris braced against a bulkhead as
a torrent of water swept between his legs. Main Prize
managed to text a friend engine control room is taking

(02:55):
on water, he wrote, engine is off and we are
floating sideways in huge seas. By midnight, the phones of
friends and families scattered across the Philippines, Australia and New
Zealand had gone silent. In the early morning of September second,
the only signals emitted from the Gulf were two pings
from its emergency radio beacon. The search and rescue effort

(03:17):
was conducted by Japan, the nearest country to the vessel's
final distress signal. Despite pleas from the crew's families who
felt the Japanese effort was too brief and limited in scope,
the governments of Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines didn't assist. Ultimately,
family members were left to organize a month long search
at their own expense. Of the ship's forty three crew,

(03:38):
only three were rescued, and one of them, Joe conete Linau,
died soon after. The remaining forty men, including main Prize
Harris and Captain Uttuck, have never been found. The Australian
Maritime Safety Authority had no jurisdiction over the ship, the
search operation, or the resulting investigation, an AMSA spokesperson said

(03:59):
in a sty statement. A New Zealand government spokesperson told
the New Site's Stuff much the same in twenty twenty one,
stressing that its Maritime Safety Agency had provided regular updates
and other assistants to the families of its missing citizens.
The sinking of the Gulf was the worst disaster in
the history of the live export trade, an industry made

(04:20):
up of about one hundred and fifty ships, with a
market value totaling twenty billion to thirty billion dollars. While
the industry's size makes it a tiny fraction of the
two point two trillion dollar global commercial shipping fleet, which
numbers around one hundred thousand vessels, the live export fleet
was already disproportionately prone to catastrophic events before a dug

(04:40):
headed into the path of the typhoon. The golf Livestock
I sinking was a tragedy that really brought a focus
to the potential dangers of the whole trade, says Damian O'Connor, who,
as New Zealand's Minister of Agriculture, spearheaded a ban on
his country's export of live cattle afterward. In twenty twenty four,
the UK followed and Australia announced plans to phase out

(05:02):
seaborn exports of live sheep. But in recent years, other countries,
especially Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, have been ramping up the
export of live cattle, swine and sheep. At the same time,
Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam have become
key importers. All of this raises questions about whether the
trade is dying or just shifting to less regulated places.

(05:27):
Why Adug chose to sail into the jaws of a
major typhoon remains a mystery. The ship's black boxes, which
might explain his decision making in his final hours, lie
three thousand to six thousand feet beneath the surface of
the East China Sea. Family members of the lost men
remain frustrated that the ship's owner, Gulf Navigation Holding in Dubai,

(05:48):
chose to move on instead of continuing the hunt for answers.
The company didn't respond to repeated requests for interviews or
comment for this story. They don't want to know, says
Ulrich Orda, the father of the Gulf's veterinarian Lucas Orda,
who was among the dead. They want to make sure
that all failings, everything is buried with the ship. A

(06:10):
handful of countries export livestock, including the US. From twenty
thirteen to twenty eighteen, the country shipped two point two
million farm animals internationally, five hundred forty five thousand, four
hundred and ninety five of them by sea. The rest
were sent by land or air, primarily to Canada and Mexico.
Prior to its twenty twenty two invasion of Ukraine, Russia

(06:33):
was the biggest importer of American cattle. Middle Eastern countries
with climate headwinds like Jordan and Saudi Arabia are notable
importers too, but for many years the two most important
countries in this business by far were Australia, the number
one exporter, and China, until recently, the number one importer.
In twenty nineteen alone, Australia shipped two point four million

(06:56):
animals abroad, mostly cattle and sheep. It also does a
healthy trade in goats, buffalo and alpacas. Traditionally, China leaned
on live export to shore up its supplies. In twenty
twenty it imported more than two hundred and fifty thousand
live cattle, though the number has declined more recently as
domestic stocks have grown and customer demand has dipped. Problems

(07:19):
have arisen with the way this trade is conducted. According
to a twenty twenty investigation by The Guardian, five live
stock vessels were lost in the decade preceding the Gulf disaster,
resulting in the deaths of crew members and tens of
thousands of animals. The human and animal suffering is difficult
to calculate, but what's clear is that those five sunk

(07:39):
ships accounted for more than three percent of the global
live export fleet, making such vessels twice as likely to
suffer a total loss as general cargo carriers. In these scenarios,
it's often the animals that faced the longest odds. In
twenty fifteen, the carrier Haidar sank in Brazil while being
loaded with five thousand cattle. In twenty nineteen, those lost

(08:02):
included the Queen Hind, which capsized in a Romanian port
with twenty two crew and fourteen thousand, six hundred sheep
on board. In both of these cases, the crew survived,
but most of the livestock drowned. There are several reasons
the industry is so dangerous. Although the average ship age
for the global general cargo fleet is twenty years, the

(08:23):
average for livestock carriers is thirty six. About eighty percent
of livestock vessels weren't built to transport animals, despite the
unique weight and stability issues they pose. What happens is
somebody buys a tanker or a car carrier at the
end of its days when the former owner was ready
to send it to Bangladesh and have it scrapped for
recycled steel, says Lynn Simpson, a former live export ship

(08:47):
veterinarian who since become an industry whistleblower, And they just
refit it with animal pens and give it another ten
to twenty thirty forty years of potentially precarious work. The
Gulf was one of these secondhand vessels, built in Germany
as a container ship in two thousand two and christened
the MEYERSK Waterford. The vessel changed ownership and names three

(09:09):
times before it was bought in twenty fifteen by Golf Navigation,
which owns a fleet of carriers, mostly oil and chemical tankers.
That year, the ship was renamed the Rama and retrofitted
with four hundred and seventy five pens on four levels,
totaling almost seventy thousand square feet. Images taken throughout its
history suggest the ship's condition declined in the years after

(09:31):
that retrofit. Its hull and superstructure, previously maintained with sharp
coats of navy and white paint, were covered over by
a drab gunmetal gray. A once clean waterline became blackened
by scum and riddled with rust by the end of
twenty fourteen, the Gulf was technically owned by a Golf
Navigation subsidiary called Golf Navigation Livestock Carrier One Limited, a

(09:56):
limited liability company registered in Panama whose only recor awarded
asset was the ship. Various staffing agencies oversaw crewing contracts.
Mark Consult Schiffart was the ship's general manager, a responsibility
that involved enforcing the International Safety Management Code. Like Golf Navigation,
Mark Consult Schiffart didn't respond to inquiries for this story.

(10:19):
In twenty nineteen, the Golf began to experience a slew
of mechanical issues. According to port records, that may was
held for three days in Broome, Australia, after port officials
identified serious deficiencies in its maintenance, navigation, and safety training.
According to the AMSA, inspectors also identified issues related to
the calculation of stability on board and halted loading until

(10:43):
the proper numbers were crunched. Records showed that authorities at
the Indonesian port of Panjang noted seven more deficiencies with
the Gulf, including problems with the ship's working conditions, pollution
control systems, and log books. Another issue involved the Gulf's
main engine propulsion, which its official accident report later said,
was marked as out of order because of defective parts

(11:06):
in a combustion cylinder. A mechanical problem of this severity
meant the Gulf's engine was struggling or completely unable to
power the vessel under normal sea conditions. More problems involved
faulty engine room gauges and thermometers, as well as an
insufficient Emergency Safety Plan, a required document under international maritime
law that outlines procedures for CREWE response in the event

(11:29):
of a collision, grounding, or sinking. It's up to individual
port officials to determine whether a ship should be detained
following an inspection failure such as this. According to Tokyou,
an international organization that oversees ports in the Asia Pacific region,
Panjang officials didn't detain the Gulf, and though the extent
of repairs and updates made to the Gulf following the

(11:52):
inspection is unknown, the ship was soon back at sea
on a journey of some three thousand nautical miles to Townsville, Australia,
where arrived on May twenty third. I learned not to
trust these people early on Simpson, who spent a decade
working on live export ships, says of the industry's upper management,
it's big money shipping. If they can cut one percent

(12:14):
off their expenses, that's a big margin. And the people
in the suits on land who are making the decisions,
they don't care. We'll be right back with a shipwreck
killed forty one crew and fifty nine hundred cattle. The
brutal business behind it goes on. Welcome back to a shipwreck,
killed forty one crew and fifty nine hundred cattle. The

(12:36):
brutal business behind it goes on the job of the
Gulf livestock once stockmen main Prize Harris and LOCKEYE Bellerbie
a New Zealander, and Orda the veterinarian entailed walking the
long corridors between hundreds of pens holding anywhere from six
to twenty one cows each. The men ensured the animals
had enough water, feed, pellets, and hay, and monitored to

(12:59):
see if any had become injured or ill. The rest
of the crew were Filipino abel seamen, skilled certified deckhands
who maintained the ship, cleaned pens, and disposed of any
animals that died. Emily Hastings, one of main Prize's sisters,
says her brother wasn't planning to make live export his career.
Will had a connection with the animals and loved learning

(13:21):
new ways to care for them with what was available.
She says he found purpose in that a stockman could
also make two hundred to three hundred dollars a day,
depending on experience, for a typical twenty six day delivery.
After deliveries, main Prize often embarked on epic solo journeys.
He'd cycled Pakistan's Swat Valley and Jordan's Waddy Room, and

(13:42):
treked into Mongolia's All Thai Mountains to stay a few
days with the region's famed eagle hunters. He'd found a
way of getting paid to see the world, says his
brother Tom. Harris Bellerbee and Orda were doing their first
live export trip. Bellerbye was looking forward to spending more
time in home in southern New Zealand managing his family's farm. Harris,

(14:04):
known as Scottie, was saving for a house, so was Orda,
who just had his first child in February and was
scheduled to begin a job at a veterinary clinic in
Townsville on Australia's northeast coast. After his contract on the
ship ended in October, Orda came aboard on June twenty
fourth for several legs between Australia and Southeast Asia. A

(14:25):
month later, the Gulf broke down off the Philippines southern coast.
According to the industry publication Baard, Maritime engineers had to
board the ship to help with repairs. Orda texted his
family during the ordeal. In the last twenty four hours
it has broken down. It has failed three times for
about eighteen hours in total, he wrote. On August fourteenth,

(14:47):
the ship pushed off from Napier, New Zealand. Less than
twenty four hours later, Adug sent an email to Marc
Consul Chiffert, later viewed by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, reporting that the
main engine head gaskets were leaking and that there were
problems with the freshwater cooling system. The problems prompted main
Prize to text his friend and fellow live export stockman,

(15:07):
Harry Morrison, who was back on land in Australia. Oh God, Maine,
Prize wrote, this could be a long journey. Repairs took
around eight hours to complete, as the Gulf floated listlessly
on the South Pacific currents. Adoug reported no other mechanical
issues to Mark Consul Schiffhart and the time between the
breakdown and the sinking in the early morning hours of

(15:28):
September second, but messages sent by main Prize and other
crew to family and friends make it clear that the
ship's problems continued. One video main Prize sent to his
siblings showed the faucet in his cabin s viewing brown sludge.
It's definitely a mixed bag with these ships, Morrison says,
But on the Gulf the conditions seemed horrific. Around dinner

(15:52):
time on August twenty eighth, Adoug received the first notification
of a developing low pressure system from Mark Consul Chiffart.
Storm and the ship were now in the Philippine Sea,
about three hundred and fifty nautical miles apart, and both
were heading northwest. Mark Consul Schiffhart's staff in Hamburg advised
Adug to take stringent adverse weather precautions. According to the

(16:14):
official accident report, Adug confirmed receipt of the email and
said he would heat it. As the ship's captain. He
knew the final decision on when and how to navigate
the impending storm was his. By dawn on September first,
the paths of the Gulf and Mysak had converged on
the bridge. Adug sent a message to Mark Consul Schiffert
at one twenty eight pm to say all was in order.

(16:37):
At four twenty one pm, he sent along routine information
about the ship's planned arrival at tong Chan. These benign
communications betrayed the chaos unfolding on board. It was now
too rough to do anything other than buckle down. Adug
ordered everyone to put their mattresses on the floor to
avoid being thrown out of bed. Group meals were canceled.

(16:59):
In a text thread with a mother, Harris said the
crew hadn't been allowed outside for twelve hours. The ship,
he said, was running at a twenty degree list eft,
he wrote. When the Gulf's engines failed around six pm,
swinging the ship broadside into the forty foot swell, the
vessel's chief officer, Eduardo Serno, received a radio call to

(17:20):
report to the engine room for the next hour. According
to his later account, he and the ship's other engineers
fought against the roll of the sea. Without the drone
of the engine, the men worked in an eerie silence.
The lights flickered. Around seven thirty pm, the Gulf's pistons
began firing again. Serno retreated to his cabin, where he

(17:40):
lay sleepless on the floor with his radio in case
of another emergency. He didn't have to wait long. Shortly
after midnight, he felt the floor tilting steeply to starboard.
The lights went out. The ship leaned hard in the darkness,
then harder when the lights came back on. Serno rang
the bridge from his cabin telephone and asked the third
officer what the angle of the list was. He was

(18:02):
told thirty degrees, more than enough for the ship to capsize.
Sereno called another officer and ordered him to pump out
the huge starboard ballast water tanks to try to ease
the list. Then he left his cabin to join that
officer in the engine room, but he was forced back
by waves breaching the decks and the severe angle of
the ship. Fifteen minutes later, the engines failed again. Adug

(18:25):
came on the radio to tell everyone to don lifejackets
and come up to the bridge. The highest point on
the ship's main structure. When Serno reached the stairs leading
to the bridge, he saw that one of the Gulf's
huge generators and two of its five lifeboats had already
been washed off. Somehow, he managed to make it up
three stair levels against the list and the slam of

(18:45):
the waves, but when the sea turned once more, he
knew he wasn't going to reach Adog. He saw a
lifeboat bucking on the water near by and decided to jump.
Just before he did so, the Big Wave, as he
later called it, smashed into the gulf and swept him away.
At the same time, on a lower deck, abelseaman Jane L.
Rosales found himself alongside main Prize and one of the

(19:08):
ship's engineers, who radioed Adug, where are you. Rosales later
remembered Adug responding, come up here at the bridge. All
of us are here, but the ship's list was too
great to climb the stairs. Rosales radioed Aduk and told
him they couldn't make it. Okay. Then Rosales recalled Aduk,
saying you take care there. A moment later, a wave,

(19:30):
presumably the Big Wave, swept the three overboard in the
swirl of swell and sinking ship. Rosales found himself near
the body of a cow and held on Somewhere in
the distance. Serno was floating beneath a full moon. Each
time Sereno was buoyed to the crest of a wave,
he saw a little less of the ship, until finally

(19:50):
it was gone. At one ten a m. The Japanese
Coast Guard received the first of two pings from the
Gulf's emergency beacon. It wasn't until the afternoon yoon of
September second that Coastguard boats reached the ship's last recorded position.
That evening, the crew spotted an orange life vest and
a pair of waving arms as he sat on the

(20:11):
deck of a Coastguard vessel. Minutes later, a heavy blanket
wrapped around him. Sereno stared blankly at his rescuers and asked,
I'm the only one. No other one for two days
he was. On the night of September fourth, the Japanese
Coast Guard spotted a half submerged life raft. Clinging to
one side was a single man, Jane L. Rosales. They

(20:35):
also found Joe canet Lenau, the crewman, who died soon after.
Then the Coast Guard had to call off the search
another typhoon was barreling in. When the operation resumed on
September seventh, the sea seemed swept clean. Forty eight hours later,
the operation ended. Four life rafts, one lifeboat, and forty

(20:55):
crew remained unaccounted for. In the aftermath of the tragedy,
Golf Navigation said everyone in the company is devastated by
the enormity of this tragic accident and was committed to
a full investigation. Mar Consult said that our thoughts are
with our crew and their families. In twenty twenty two,

(21:16):
Panama released the official accident report, its responsibility as the
country whose flag the ship had been flying. It revealed
little beyond what had come out in the press and
what Sereno and Rosales had said in their only public
comments to date, the only ones they've offered. They were
publicly interviewed by a panel of Philippine officials that included
Maya Adug Sanchez, a judge, and the sister of Captain Adug.

(21:39):
What the report does make clear is that Golf Navigation,
which had the principal responsibility as the ship's owner, did
little to help Panama's investigators. The investigators reported that the
information Golf navigation supplied was either poor or not collected
at all. Particularly, they noted the company offered little detail
regarding mar Consul chiffa Arts communications with Adug, about the

(22:02):
state of the main engine during passage from New Zealand
to China, or how much the management company was communicating
about the storm with the captain. Indeed, the report doesn't
mention the ship's breakdown off the Philippines in July, nor
does it include any communications between Adug and Mark Consul
Chiffert on August twenty ninth, when Adug knew the storm
was growing stronger. Also left out was a portentous email

(22:25):
viewed by BusinessWeek that Adug had sent Golf Navigations then
director of Technical Operations, a yellow Esposito prior to the
Golf Livestock one's arrival in Napier, New Zealand. Adug asked
Esposito if he should divulge to port authorities there that
the ship's emergency power generator was inoperable. He urged Esposito
to get back to him. Adug said Mark consult Chiffert

(22:48):
hadn't responded to his message about the mechanical issue. It's
unknown whether Esposito responded like Mark consult Chiffert and his
bosses at Golf Navigation, he didn't respond to requests for commic.
According to the Panama report, Gulf Navigation also never turned
over the ship's loading papers from the Navier stop, which
would have outlined the weights of the livestock, feed water,

(23:11):
and other cargo, critical measures of a ship's threshold for
stability in rough seas. The investigators were forced instead to
base their analysis on a stability report, a document that
breaks down the weights of individual aspects of the ship,
from diesel oil, to ballast water to cattle manure. That
report had a print date of August twelve, two days
before the cattle were loaded in Napier. In New Zealand,

(23:35):
cattle are weighed in kilograms when they arrive at a
quarantine station in the hours or days prior to their
loading onto a vessel. To ship more animals at once,
a cattle exporter wants each one as light as possible.
New Zealand law allows exporters to curfew the animals for
as long as twelve hours, that is, to stop feeding them.
Curfewing also reduces effluent spillage onto roads when cattle are

(23:58):
transported from stock year to port. But according to Simpson,
the former live export veterinarian, curfewing can last much longer
because of logistical delays in the drive to port, the
loading process, and so on. Often, she says, the difficult
nature of the transport means the animals also don't drink
any water during that time, which can stretch on long

(24:19):
enough for them to suffer early stages of dehydration. The
average weight of a dairy cow is about two hundred
and seventy kilograms or a little more than five hundred
and ninety five pounds, but during the curfewing process an
animal can shed a striking amount of weight. BusinessWeek was
able to obtain the Gulf's loading papers from August fourteenth,
the official record of the weights, which note only an

(24:41):
average weight of the fifty eight hundred sixty seven dairy
cattle on board two hundred and fifty kilograms or just
over five hundred and fifty one pounds. Serino, whose job
it was to ensure the ship wasn't carrying more weight
than it could bear, recorded the ship's weight as three million,
two hundred and thirty three thousand, six hund undred and
thirty pounds, or about one point five million kilograms, but

(25:05):
main Prize, Bellerby, and Harris would have had the feed
and water troughs filled in anticipation of the cow's rival.
Once filled up again, they are no longer two hundred
and fifty kilogram cattle, but two hundred and seventy kilogram cattle.
Simpson says the difference would have been more than two
hundred and fifty thousand pounds, equivalent to at least an
additional four hundred and thirty cows at this point. Simpson

(25:28):
says the weights were far off enough that the ship's
stability should have been recalculated, but she says this often
doesn't happen. It's unclear whether any officers did the math
again around the time the gulf broke down outside Napier.
Main Prize had told Morrison in his messages that the
ship's pace left him concerned that it would run out
of cattle fodder. The holds where the feed was located

(25:51):
in the gulf were deep in the hull. If they
were low or empty, the ship's center of gravity would
have been much different than it had been in Napier
when the original verification was done. The emptying of the
ballast tanks that Sereno ordered done in the midst of
the storm would have shifted the ship's stability even further.
When a vessel's center of gravity shifts upward, it starts

(26:11):
to roll slower and slower with each swell. In their report,
Panama's investigators concluded that the Gulf's rolling got so extreme
that it caused a sudden capsizing and sinking. Lenard Ephraim,
the managing director of chartering in operations at Dutch shipping
company of Run, says balancing animals weight throughout the export

(26:31):
process is complex and challenging. Of course, weather has an impact,
but then ship design and how you manage and root
your voyages makes a difference, he says. He also acknowledges
that curfewing is a common tactic to squeeze more animals aboard.
There's always going to be people that try to trick
the system. Golf navigation in mar Consul Schiffart had already

(26:53):
learned the limits of a ship like the Gulf. Back
in twenty eighteen, the Joan, a converted livestock carrier of
roughly the same vintage with the same whole dimensions and weights,
had almost capsized while setting off from Australia, with thousands
of cattle aboard filmed rolling uncontrollably at severe angles. The
ship was immediately turned back to port and its livestock offloaded.

(27:15):
It was carrying forty three hundred and twenty seven cattle
on board, one quarter fewer than the Golf did on
its ill fated voyage. If the same group had been
managing the two ships, and she was such a doppleganger
to the Golf livestock, I were the same modifications made
to the Gulf to ensure she was safe as possible.
Simpson asks two such similar ships getting similar conversions, trading

(27:40):
from the same country on similar routes, there is no
way they didn't see the potential for risk. In the
months leading up to the sinking, Golf Navigation was in
financial crisis. A public audit conducted by Deloitte found that
in the first nine months of twenty twenty, the company
had incurred a loss of more than seventeen million dollars
after using about thirteen million dollars the year before. According

(28:03):
to a person familiar with the company's internal operations at
the time, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear
of reprisals. Golf Navigation had breached several covenants in some
of its loans and was forced to repay them by
refinancing with a private equity firm at high interest rates
and with tight stipulations. On August thirty first, just hours

(28:24):
before the golf disappeared, Golf Navigation fired its entire board
of directors and appointed a new one. Publicly, it said
this was to support the company's relentless efforts for a
new start in the maritime sector after the peak of
the impact of COVID. Nineteen days later, Golf Navigation filed
an insurance claim for the lost chip. The insurer eventually

(28:45):
paid twenty two point four million dollars. The person familiar
with Golf Navigation's operations says the money was used to
repay part of an outstanding loan. The company appeared to
have more incentive to keep the creaky vessel at sea
than to scrap it. Isn't exactly a wash in funds
for maintenance and repairs. Within the industry, the response to

(29:06):
the live export bans in New Zealand and elsewhere has
been muted. Shipping companies have long been able to adapt
to political currents and consumer demand. According to a report
by the Dutch agribusiness financial company Rabobank, by mid twenty
twenty four, the flow of dairy cattle from Australia and
New Zealand to China had slowed to barely a trickle.

(29:26):
The reduction, the report said, was because of both the
New Zealand ban and the slowdown in Chinese demand. But
Southeast Asian markets, where there has been a renewed focus
on local herd expansion and milk supply growth, are poised
to pick up some of China's slack. Meanwhile, in South America,
where there's less regulation on live export, the trade is growing.

(29:48):
The Government of Australia, which has continued to permit the
shipping of live cattle overseas, said in a statement that
the industry is strongly regulated and that it's committed to
ensuring high welfare standards are maintained in this trade. At
the moment, the global trade for livestock is quite strong
and all the ships are utilized. Ruin Zephraim says he
acknowledges the headwinds his company and the industry writ large

(30:11):
are facing. The industry's response has been to phase out
converted live export ships in favor of vessels that have
been purpose built for the trade. If you purpose build,
you can center your design around what the animal needs,
says Efraim. That's the blueprint. Over the course of three
years and through lawyers, sources, emails and social media messages.

(30:33):
Eduardo Serno, J. L. Rosales, Maya Adu Sanchez, and the
family members of the remaining thirty six Filipino seamen have
declined to comment. The Australian and Kiwi family members who
spoke to BusinessWeek still want to know more about what
happened out there. For Ulrich and Sabine Orda, Lucas's parents,
palpable anger remains not only toward Gulf Navigation Mark Consul

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Schiffhart and the other companies associated with the ship for
leaving its black boxes at the bottom of the sea,
but also toward the Australian, New Zealand and Philippine governments
for not doing more to bolster search and rescue efforts.
Lockeye Bellarbi's ken built a memorial for him on the
family farm. It's got this gorgeous view looking at his
favorite mountains, says his mother Lucy. We've built a little

(31:20):
hut there so we can have sleepovers with him. The
main Prizes haven't had a funeral for a while. They
wanted to throw a party a celebration of Will's life,
but the thought of it has been overwhelming. It's all
a strange limbo, says Maine Prize's eldest sister Sarah. Although
they knew it seemed crazy, for years, they held on

(31:40):
to a shred of hope that Will might be out
there on one of the countless uninhabited islands in the
Western Pacific that the families desperately wanted searched. We joke,
his sister Emily says, Will stop, come back, come back
to normal life. Karen Adrian Scottie Harris's mother has found
some comfort in being a pain in the ass to

(32:02):
a lot of people by calling officials in the New
Zealand Government's Ministry for Primary Industries and the live Export
industry and digging for more information. The distraction is hardly enough.
We don't have a word in English to capture the
deepness of grief at this level, she says, it doesn't exist.
Last year, she wrote a note to her son and

(32:23):
gave it to a stockwoman who was heading out on
a ship that would pass over the place where the
Gulf livestock I was lost. The note read, in part,
I am so honored to have such a beautiful, kind
and generous soul. Call me mum, Thank you for choosing me.
I have loved every minute of our journey together. This
cannot be the end. The stockwoman read the note to

(32:46):
the crew, slipped it in a bottle, and threw it overboard.
This story was produced in collaboration with the Food and
Environment Reporting Network, a nonprofit investigative news organization.