Experienced fisherman Joel Quince arrived at Heathrow Airport in 2012 at the age of 28, thrilled to have landed a job as a crew member on a Tennessee trawler.
Joel had a young family thousands of miles away in the Philippines. He expected to make a good living working in the UK. He was due to earn $1,012 (£660) a week for 48 hours.
He took a bus from London to Carlisle, where he was picked up by the owner's son, Tom Nicholson Jr.
“On the way to the ship, he said to us, 'You have to give us your documents,' so without hesitation, we gave them all the documents,” he said.
Joel said he then headed straight to the fishing grounds and started working.
But he was surprised to learn that his boat was not the Mattanja, which was the only vessel allowed to work under the visa conditions, but the Philomena. “This was already suspicious to me,” he said.
He claims that instead of the 48-hour workweek he was told he worked 18 hours a day, seven days a week while Philomena was out fishing.
Joel's salary was £637, which meant he was earning less than the minimum wage in Britain, which at the time was not a legal requirement for fishermen like him to be paid the minimum wage.
