The Ghanaian government’s efforts to monitor and report illegal fishing activities on trawlers operating under its flag, many owned by Chinese companies, has been critically undermined through intimidation and bribery, according to a damning new report by the London-based non-profit Environmental Justice Foundation.

Since 2018, all industrial fishing vessels have been required to have a government-appointed observer on board as part of an effort to curtail rampant illegal fishing activities that are devastating the country’s fish stocks. But the EJF discovered from interviews with six different fisheries observers and ten crew members from various trawlers that these observers are largely ineffective and have done nothing to halt illegal fishing practices.