Battle to stop Africa’s waters being ravaged by China’s dark fishing fleets

https://observer.co.uk/news/oceans/article/battle-to-stop-africas-waters-being-ravaged-by-chinas-dark-fishing-fleets-1

Sunday 8 June 2025

As David Attenborough warns of the damage being wreaked on the oceans by seabed trawling, the role of an army of mystery boats is in the spotlight.

The Ghanaian flag that droops from the mast of the Meng Xin 10 is one of the few African things about the ­fishing boat.

The deckhands are Ghanaian, and officially it is owned by a company in Accra. But the officers are Chinese, all the instruments and telemetry are in Mandarin, and the people who call the shots are based in the northeastern Chinese port city of Dalian.

For 10 years the blue-hulled vessel, one of at least 30 that investigators have linked to Dalian Mengxin Ocean Fishery, has meandered along Ghana’s coastline, dragging a heavy beam along the ocean floor about 200m below, bottom trawling for squid and cuttlefish.

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