When he first entered the Arafura Sea from the Gulf of Carpentaria, Gu Kun was still a little excited.
Although scientific reason told him that looking at radar to find targets is more reliable than using a telescope, the habit he developed when he was a fisherman and a captain since he was a child still made him unable to help but run to the bridge and use a high-power rangefinder to look around in person.
I hope that "some fishermen's small wooden boats are too small and cannot be detected by radar error."
Unfortunately, he didn't find anything from the time he entered the Arafura Sea at 10 a.m. until the time for lunch, so he had to go to dinner first at the invitation of the female secretary and female ministers.
After dinner, he was bored and felt a little sleepy, so he took a nap until three o'clock in the afternoon. When he went to sleep, he told him to wake him up if he met a fisherman or a pirate.
That gesture is like treating pirates as experience lumps for killing monsters and upgrading.
"Why haven't you met any pirates in this damn place?"
When he woke up from his nap, Gu Kun looked at his watch and realized that he had slept for enough time, and the female secretary didn't call him at all.
After putting on his clothes and opening the porthole window of his bedroom to enjoy the sea breeze, and eating two Darwin mangoes to moisten his throat, Gu Kun heard footsteps behind him. He turned around and saw that it was Lan Fang's Foreign Minister Tang Jia.
"Why are you so sure that you will encounter fishermen or pirates here? Couldn't it be because you were unlucky last time?" Tang Jia handed him a bottle of mango juice, indicating that it would be better to drink the juice directly instead of eating the fruit.
Gu Kun took it and took a sip: "That's because you don't understand the situation of this generation - the maximum width of the Arafura Sea is less than 400 nautical miles. According to the 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone of the 1975 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,
In terms of width, the entire Arafura Sea must be completely divided between Australia and Indonesia, and there will be no indifferent areas in the middle.
But in fact, the law enforcement force of Indonesians in the easternmost part of the country is very weak, especially in the east of East Timor, which is so poor and far away from international commercial waterways. Maritime patrols will lose money. Over time, Indonesians have acquiesced in this
I left this place alone, and if there was a slight dispute, I asked them to seek justice, and they also passed it on to the Australians.
This situation has long been taken advantage of by local fishery slave owners. They allocate a little money from their profits to manage Indonesian fishery administration and maritime patrol personnel, which has long bought a lawless business environment.
If something happens here, as long as there is no oil and water, the two countries will still blame each other. In addition, we are prepared for 'freedom of navigation' and 'legitimate defense', so we are not afraid. The islands here are not even connected to normal civilian networks and
There are no telephone lines."
In almost all coastal countries in Southeast Asia, the development of various regions is extremely uneven.
For example, Indonesia's capital Jakarta and other economic core areas are all near the Sunda Strait. Lijiapo and Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur are on the coast of the Malacca Strait, and even the top three largest cities in Malaysia (the other two are Penang and Johor Bahru) are also there.
Along the Strait of Malacca.
Kuching, the core city in East Malaysia, Saigon, an important trading port in Vietnam since ancient times, and Manila in the Philippines, these cities all have one characteristic, that is, they are "located on the trade routes between ancient China and the Western world."
Without the trade routes between China and the West, other regions in Southeast Asia would have been poor and backward areas. To put it bluntly, Southeast Asia has only played a "passing through" role in the trade between the East and the West since ancient times.
As long as you don't pass by, even in the 21st century, there are many places that you don't care about.
The Internet celebrity tourist destinations created by Chinese travel companies in later generations, such as Boracay Island in the Philippines and Semporna in Sabah, East Malaysia. Anyone who has actually been there will know how bad the public security is in those places. The water house in Semporna
By staying in a hotel, you are nominally living in Malaysia, but it often happens that rebels from the southern Philippines come over in speedboats and kidnap you for ransom.
The easternmost parts of Malaysia and Indonesia, and the southernmost part of the Philippines, that is, the Sulawesi Sea and Banda Sea, and the Arafura Sea are almost impossible to reach because they are far away from international trade routes.
"Then you know a lot about the unspoken rules of the underground world here. It seems that I need to make up for my mistakes. So far, I only know the rules of the civilized world above the surface." After listening to this, Tang Jia couldn't help but complain to himself,
I feel ashamed of my shallow experience.
"It's okay, you can learn slowly. In other countries, there will be no 24-year-old women as foreign ministers. You still have a lot to learn, so calm down." Gu Kun patted Tang Jia on the shoulder encouragingly.
.
…
Passive waiting is destined to be boring, so that the first afternoon entering the Arafura Sea was wasted.
Waiting for the imaginary enemy to kill you, how can you be more efficient than taking the initiative to kill people and seize treasures?
In the evening, Gu Kun had no choice but to order the "Zhu Sen" to reduce the ship's speed. He also remotely ordered the "Yonghua", which had just sailed from Port Moresby in the morning, to also slow down on the grounds of "maintaining economic speed and reducing power system losses".
, rush to the scene as soon as possible to avoid trouble.
At such a low speed, it only took a whole night to drive 100 nautical miles. The next day, Foxiao finally stayed in the Arafura Sea and did not enter the Banda Sea - because once it entered the Banda Sea, most of the sea area was
The undisputed inland sea of Indonesia is no longer the exclusive economic zone equally divided between Indonesia and Australia.
"If no one comes to cause trouble, I will have no choice but to go back and walk around a few more times... But will that leave too obvious evidence and be accused of fishing in the future?"
At dawn, Gu Kun walked to the bridge, looked around again with the rangefinder, and couldn't help but sigh.
"There should be a chance, right? I remember that when we came here, those offal products were very common. Maybe this time it's because we are too close to the center line of the exclusive economic zones between Australia and Indonesia, so we encounter less of them. This kind of gray industry,
It must be easier to encounter the closer you get to Indonesia." Tang Jia comforted him next to him.
"That's right. Although I haven't encountered it yet, the closer you go to the coast of Indonesia, the higher the probability." Gu Kun also mustered up his confidence again.
The width of the western section of the Arafura Sea is still close to 300 nautical miles, and each country's exclusive economic zone is 130 to 140 nautical miles wide. Those fishermen in small wooden boats and speedboats really don't need to go so far if they are fishing for Australian dragons.
Far away - lobsters are all attached to the seabed of coral reefs, not in the deep sea.
With this confidence, Gu Kun felt much more comfortable. His hard work paid off. At about seven o'clock in the morning, he finally saw several small fishing boats of unknown origin and began to observe around the "Zhu Sen".
Then it disappeared again.
Two hours later, at about 9 a.m., Indonesia's East Maluku Islands and Aru Islands had appeared on the sea search radar of the "Jusen", which meant that they were less than 50 nautical miles away from those islands.
.
At this time, more and more small boats finally began to appear, and they were no longer the kind of small wooden boats with an external diesel engine, but the real aluminum alloy speedboats.
Seeing these items appear in the rangefinder, Gu Kun secretly rejoiced: "Look at this equipment, I hope it is a temporary fishing slave of a pirate."
In just 20 minutes, some small boats had already approached the "Zhu Sen" from the end of the field of vision. They did not dare to make any mistakes. The initial test move was still to go back and forth around the boat, and then they held some baskets seemingly in good faith.
The wooden barrels were on display, and a loudspeaker was used to shout to the ship.
"What are they talking about?" Tang Jia couldn't understand the Lio dialect or the Timorese dialect, so he just hid in the safety of the captain's room and was confused.
Gu Kun actually didn't understand, but he knew the habits of these people, so he explained calmly: "They probably want to buy and sell something by force. Just like what those tourist groups in Semporna, Boracay, and Cebu encountered.
"
Soon, a bodyguard on the boat who knew the local dialect came over and relayed the boat's request to Gu Kun. It was as expected by Gu Kun.
Tang Jia: "How should we deal with it?"
Gu Kun showed a cruel smile: "Of course I struck up a conversation with them, negotiated the price, and then decided not to buy it because it was too expensive."
Anyone who has traveled in Southeast Asia knows that when you are on a big boat, you encounter a local snake approaching a small boat to sell you. It is okay to just ignore it. But if you ask the price and don’t buy it, the end result will be like cutting off some souvenirs and then buying them again.
If you don't buy one, you will anger the seller.
Those fishermen and slave owners who originally just wanted to carry some light weapons and collect some protection fees may be angered and turn into pirates if they don't stop doing anything.
Don't think that those small boats won't dare to attack big ships when they see them. Contemporary pirates are not the same thing as ancient pirates. If you go to Somalia, you will know that pirates all attack in small speedboats, but the ships that are besieged are...
Large cargo ships ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of tons.
They didn't care at all about the size of the ship when picking their targets, only whether it looked armed.
Gu Kun's "Zhu Sen" looks like it's just the fat of a rich man. It's not an armed combat ship. The more luxurious it is, the more fat it will be, and the more ransom it can extort.
And this kind of misunderstanding might not have happened if it were in another sea area, because after all, the "Joseph" has frequently appeared on TV recently and has long been the most famous ship in the world. There are many people in developed countries who like it.
I know to some extent that the "Zhusen" has self-defense firepower.
However, these small Indonesian islands near the Banda Sea and the Timor Sea are notoriously inaccessible to the Internet, telephone, and television. The communication here is even backward, which is a necessary condition for slave owners to shackle their slaves.
Therefore, the degree of information occlusion of people here is even more terrible than that of "every village has access to the Internet", almost to the level of Martians and "What? The Qing Dynasty is dead?"
Such fearless blessing from the ignorant gives them the courage to act boldly.
"Lobsters, lobsters, Australian lobsters of at least 6 pounds each! Sir, go ahead and buy them. It's not convenient for a big boat like yours to catch the food yourself, but Aolong is famous."
Before the conflict intensified, everything seemed to be in harmony for the time being. Two sales speedboats approached the side of the Zhu Sen. The people on the ship were even willing to pretend to lower half of the gangway to negotiate with them.
The person in charge of security on the ship, Gao Jianxiong, the president of Blackwater Security Company, personally used a loudspeaker in a safe position to shout and ask for the price: "It looks good, how much does it cost for one?"
Naturally, there are translators between the two parties to help with translation.
"It's only US$25 per pound, US$150 per piece - it's a great deal for such a big Australian dragon."
"You're kidding! We went to Sydney to watch the Olympics a few days ago. The retail price in ordinary restaurants in Sydney is not much higher than here! You have just fished it from the place of origin, and you dare to sell it at 80% of the price in Sydney restaurants?" Gao Jianxiong immediately angered the other party.
To be honest, 25 US dollars per pound, especially for such a large lobster, is still cheap in restaurants and even wet markets in developed countries. However, in the country of origin, it is indeed a bit darker.
However, people like Southeast Asian tour groups who intercept large ships and forcefully sell them will probably not really sell them at a low price according to the country of origin, otherwise there will be no protection fee at all.
"What do you mean? Is this a pastime? You have insulted us! Brothers, copy the guys! Let them know that we also have dignity!"