Vanished at sea: the Ghanaian who was protecting the 'people's fish'

Illegal fishing by Chinese-owned trawlers is costing the country millions - and one of the officials trying to stop it has now been missing for monthsIn his cramped living room in an Accra backstreet, Bernard Essien pulls out a sheet of paper - a statement signed by his elder brother Emmanuel and addressed to the Ghanaian police. Two weeks before 28-year-old Emmanuel vanished at sea, his handwritten account and accompanying video footage alleged illegal fishing by a trawler he had been working on. If the allegation was proved true, the ship's captain faced a minimum fine of $1m.the case of aEmmanuel Essien was a fishing observer, one of Ghana's front line defenders against an overfishing crisis that is among the worst in west Africa. Illegal and destructive practices by foreign-owned trawlers are draining the Ghanaian economy of an estimated ?50m a year. For those living along Ghana's 350-mile coastline, overfishing has driven small pelagic species known as "people's fish", the staple diet, to the verge of collapse. Continue reading...