‘I Will Not Go Back’: Ghanaian Fisherman Describes Abuse on Chinese Trawler

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Michael was uneasy about taking a job aboard a Chinese trawler in the Gulf of Guinea.

A young man from central Ghana, Michael had to feed his family, but didn’t like the idea of working on the kind of industrial vessel that has robbed his countrymen of food and income for decades. His unease proved prophetic, as he said he and other crew members suffered abuse from the Chinese captain and crew as well as dangerous, unsanitary working conditions.

One morning, the crew noticed a damaged part of the trawler’s winch, but their pleas to fix it were ignored, according to an African Arguments report. That day, a shackle snapped, a metal wire caught Michael’s leg and he was tossed into the air. He landed, injuring his knee, shoulder and head.

He lost consciousness and awoke on a fishing net crawling with cockroaches.

“I was bleeding,” said Michael, who spoke to African Arguments using a pseudonym. “It was very painful. My hand, my legs, I couldn’t control them. I knew then that something bad had happened.”

Michael worked as a deckhand on a trawler for two years but is now seeking other work.

“No matter how big the salary is, I will not go back,” Michael told African Arguments. “I have family to take care of so I cannot just go and risk my life.”

Aboard the trawler, Michael said the crew was routinely forced to perform illegal fishing tactics, such as “saiko,” the transshipment of fish at sea. Saiko typically occurs when fish is transferred from a trawler to a large canoe to hide the origin of the catch. The canoes can carry about 450 times more fish than an artisanal fishing canoe.

In 2017, saiko took 100,000 tons of fish from Ghanaian waters, costing the country millions of dollars in revenue and threatening food security and jobs, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF). The foundation also reported that 90% of trawlers engaged in saiko in Ghana are Chinese-owned, usually through local front companies.

More than 200 coastal villages in Ghana rely on fishing as their primary source of income. There has been a drop in average annual income of up to 40% per artisanal canoe in the past 15 years or so, according to the EJF.

China, which commands the world’s largest distant-water fishing fleet, has targeted West African waters for decades and is the world’s worst illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing offender, according to the IUU Fishing Index.

African crewmen aboard Chinese trawlers, as well as fisheries inspectors, have complained of onboard abuse for years.

Emmanuel Essien was a 28-year-old Ghanaian fisheries observer when he went missing in 2019. Essien worked on board the Chinese trawler Meng Xin 15 when he captured video of the crew engaging in saiko.

Two weeks after Essien took the video and made a report to local authorities, he disappeared from his cabin on the Meng Xin 15. According to the EJF, a police report found no signs of foul play related to Essien’s disappearance, but his family doesn’t expect to see him again.

As in other areas of West Africa, Chinese trawlers are known for their aggressive attitude toward artisanal fishermen.

Michael told African Arguments that the trawler he worked on often came close to shore at night to fish illegally in Ghana’s exclusive economic zone to engage in bottom trawling, which destroys the ecosystem and catches massive numbers of juvenile fish, further depleting the stocks.

Fishing that close to shore, the trawler routinely rammed artisanal canoes and destroyed their equipment, Michael said.

“Every night we ran over a net,” he told African Arguments. “The captain told us to just cut it up and throw it away. We feel bad. Maybe they suffer and must take loans to fix the net. It’s like kicking our brothers and fathers or one of our relatives out of the business.”