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From this north Sumatran port it's a two hour ride into the Malacca straits to find a grim tale of cruelty and abuse. Hundred of young children trapped as slaves on these traditional fishing platforms known as jermal which produce the highly prized salted anchovies sought throughout Indonesia and exported to Japan, Malaysia and Singapore.

After being refused access to several platforms, at nightfall we approached one where the foreman was renowned for his cruelty and where the workload was constant. Most of the boys on this jermal are underage, subjected to back-breaking work for a wage of less than $20 a month.

The foreman definitely wasn't keen to have us onboard. It took half an hour to convince him that we weren't going to get in the way, but clearly his main concern was that we'd see that several of his workers were mere children living in fear and held virtually captive. Although illegal in Indonesia, low paid child labour has always been a feature of this industry.

So as not to arouse the foreman's suspicions, we tried to speak to the oldest boy first, one of only two on board above the legal age.  But no sooner had we sat down it was back to work.

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And so it goes on day and night. Separating the anchovies from the other fish, boiling, and then drying them. The night we spent on the jermal work finished early at 11:00 pm. At high tide they work up to 20 hours a day resting for only a few minutes every hour. At least the low tides at the moment mean they can sleep six uninterrupted hours before dawn when it starts all over again. At the mercy of the elements, in the middle of the ocean, far from their homes and families, this is no life for young children.

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The foreman has worked on the jermals for over 25 years and has seen a steady decline in the numbers of fish being caught.

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And now new problems like campaigns against child labour are making his life even more difficult. Activists have visited this jermal several times recently to take underage boys away. As far as he's concerned, it's unwelcome interference.

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In the end, it will be competition from the big ships carrying all the latest technology that could mean the end of the jermal.

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So he takes his frustration out on the boys. They are obviously terrified of him and we had to surreptitiously record these interviews.

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And, of course, the work itself is very dangerous. [Putra] had a bad accident two weeks ago injuring his head when his shirt caught on the wench and he was thrown from the platform. There's no compensation, no danger money or safety procedures, and if past experience is anything to go by there's not even a guarantee he'll be paid after his three months here. But some of the boys have nowhere else to go, they're either orphans or from broken homes.

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But Putra does have a family home, and back at his village we meet his mother who says she never wanted him to go in the first place but he'd never seen the sea and he insisted.

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When we told her about his accident she was visibly upset. There will never be a shortage of children to work on the jermals in poverty-stricken Indonesia. Hangouts like the north Sumatran capital's main bus terminal are favourite recruiting grounds. Mohammed [Jalani] works with street children. He finds many of the children here have worked on the jermals.

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