I'm in the middle of it right now! In addition to some amazing first-person narrative about life at sea, it does answer a lot of the "why don't they just" questions in this thread. However he doesn't offer a solution to the fundamental tragedy of the commons problem. As with many other global problems, there seems no way to solve this without global government co-ordination, which seems pretty unlikely.

> In addition to some amazing first-person narrative about life at sea, it does answer a lot of the "why don't they just" questions in this thread.

Yeah it puts into perspective how daunting the tasks of cleaning up the oceans (pollution, crime, illegal fishery, drilling, etc.) really are.

Just wanted to add that this is a superb and informative book, and was one of my favorite non-fiction reads in a long time.