“In the past, we could process five to ten basins of fish a day,” says Ruby Adukpo, a leader of the Volta Regional Fishmongers and Processors Association. “Now, if you see just one basin, it’s a good day.”

Ruby is one of thousands of women along Ghana’s coastline who depend on fish processing and trading — not just for income, but for food security, cultural continuity, and the survival of entire communities. But today, the women’s fires are going cold. Ghana’s small-scale fishing communities are in crisis, and the burden is falling heavily on the shoulders of women.

The causes are complex: overfishing, climate-induced changes in ocean currents, and, above all, the illegal incursions of industrial trawlers into nearshore waters — where artisanal fishers operate. Despite longstanding laws, enforcement has been weak, leaving fishers at the mercy of powerful foreign fleets.

In response, Ghana passed a new Fisheries and Aquaculture Act, which includes the expansion of the Inshore Exclusive Zone (IEZ) from 6 to 12 nautical miles — a measure aimed at protecting artisanal fishers from industrial intrusion. But for Ruby and her colleagues, the victory remains only on paper.

“We are afraid the policy will be reversed,” she says. “We’ve heard that industrial players are lobbying to cancel it. But what about us? Who lobbies for the women?”

In towns like Anyanui, Salakope, Woe, and Dzelukope, the story repeats itself: fishmongers with reduced stock, traders losing clients, families unable to meet basic needs. Many women have been forced to abandon their traditional work altogether, switching to petty trade or migrating to Accra.

Elinam Gati, a 28-year-old second-generation fish processor in Salakope, shares her dilemma: “My mother taught me this trade, and I wanted to continue. But we can’t survive on passion. There is no fish.”

The issue is not only economic — it is generational and deeply cultural. Women are the backbone of Ghana’s fisheries post-harvest sector. They not only smoke and distribute the fish, but they control pricing, manage household economies, and preserve the very identity of coastal communities.

“When the fish disappear, the women disappear,” says Ruby. “And when we disappear, whole communities collapse.”

For many fishmongers and processors, the expanded IEZ is not just a policy — it is a promise of restoration. But promises alone are not enough.

“Enforcement is key. We don’t need another law sitting on the shelf,” Ruby says. “We need the Navy, the Fisheries Commission, the government — all to act. If they fail, we all fail.”

In the smoke-filled sheds of the coast, the women wait — not for handouts, but for justice.

Source: Ivy Priscilla Setordjie

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The mother, named locally as Charlotte Golunski, her partner and one-year-old daughter are reported to be among 15 people to have been rescued from the luxury yacht Bayesian early on Monday.

Six people – including British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch – are missing with one man found dead outside the wreckage.

The 56m (183ft) vessel, which was carrying 10 crew and 12 passengers, sank half a mile off the coast of Palermo after encountering a heavy storm overnight that caused waterspouts, or rotating columns of air, to appear over the sea.

Charlotte told Italian newspaper La Repubblica her family survived because they were on deck when the yacht sank.

She said they were woken by “thunder, lightning and waves that made our boat dance”, and it felt like “the end of the world” before they were thrown into the water.

“For two seconds I lost my daughter in the sea then quickly hugged her amid the fury of the waves,” the paper quoted her as saying.

Charlotte said she held her baby “afloat with all my strength, my arms stretched upwards to keep her from drowning”.

“It was all dark. In the water I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I screamed for help but all I could hear around me was the screams of others,” she added.

A lifeboat inflated and she said 11 people were able to climb in. All three of the family were unharmed and taken to hospital for check-ups.

Karsten Borner, captain of a nearby boat, said his crew took on board some survivors on a life raft, including three who were seriously injured.

Describing the moment, the storm hit, he told Italian news outlet Rai the superyacht tipped to its side and sank within “a few minutes”

“It all happened in really little time,” he said.

A local fisherman, Giuseppe, told Reuters he was on board a motorboat when he saw “mats and T-shirts floating in the sea”.

Another witness, Fabio Cefalù, captain of a trawler, says he was about to go out on a fishing trip when he saw flashes of lightning so he stayed in the harbour.

“At about 4:15am we saw a flare in the sea,” he said, according to the EVN news agency reports.

“We waited for this waterspout to pass. After 10 minutes we went out to the sea and we saw cushions and all the rest of the boat [that had sunk], and everything which was on the deck, at sea. However, we did not see any people in the sea.”

Another fisherman described seeing the yacht “sinking with my own eyes”.

Speaking to the newspaper Giornale di Sicilia, the witness said he was at home when the tornado hit.

“Then I saw the boat, it had only one mast, it was very big,” he said.

Shortly afterwards he went down to the Santa Nicolicchia bay in Porticello, the fishing village near Palermo where the disaster unfolded, to get a better look at what was happening.

He added: “The boat was still floating, then all of a sudden it disappeared. I saw it sinking with my own eyes.”

Source: BBC

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This decision follows a month-long closure of the fishing season as a government measure aimed at restoring depleting fish stocks.

A ceremony at the Akplabanya Beach Site in the Ada West District of the Greater Accra Region symbolically marked the reopening of the sea for artisanal and inshore fleets.

The Minister for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Mavis Hawa Koomson, officially declared the sea open and called on all stakeholders to engage in the conservation of Ghana’s marine resources.

“The closed fishing season is a strategy adopted by the ministry and the fisheries commission to aid in the recovery of over-exploited fisheries resources, rebuild depleted fish species, and reduce fishing pressure on these resources,” she said.

“I urge the people of Upper Manya in the Ada West to move forward with a renewed dedication to conserving our precious marine resources. May this season bring abundant catches and prosperity to the fisheries and aquaculture sector,” she added.

Expressing deep remorse, Funny Face appealed to Ghanaians for forgiveness and took full responsibility for the events surrounding his arrest, emphasizing that he was not under the influence of alcohol at the time of the accident, contrary to some media reports.

Interestingly, Funny Face’s act of bathing in the sea mirrors a trend among Ghanaian celebrities who have encountered legal issues.

Notable figures such as Shatta Wale, Bulldog, and Medikal, among others, have also performed similar acts of cleansing in the sea following their legal troubles, as captured in still shots from the video interview.

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According to the Secretary-General of the Convention on Wetlands, Dr. Musonda Mumba, the continuous pollution of beaches and other Ramsar sites along the West African coastline with plastic materials has reached an alarming rate and would require immediate solutions.

The experienced environmentalist indicated that the “scientific information is showing that we are going to possibly have more plastics than fish in the sea.”

Speaking to JoyNews’ Blessed Sogah, Dr. Musonda further explained that the Global Wetlands Outlook report issued in 2021 flagged the complexities of wetland loss, including the plastics menace, which, in her view, is getting out of hand.

Citing the Abijan Convention on Wetlands, which has countries such as Ghana as signatories, Dr. Musonda called for intergovernmental collaboration to effectively tackle plastic pollution.

The government of Ghana officially commenced intergovernmental negotiations on plastic pollution in Nairobi, Kenya, leading the pack of African countries calling for sustainable plastic production as nations worldwide attempt to formulate an internationally binding law aimed at tackling plastic pollution.

According to the Secretary-General of the Convention on Wetlands, the forum also portends significant influence over policy decisions on plastics going forward.

Ghana continues to grapple with what experts describe as a plastic menace, as an estimated 86 percent of the country’s plastic waste load is improperly disposed of, resulting in plastics clogging up stormwater drains, rivers, and streams and ending up in the oceans.

Aside from its contribution to perennial flooding, plastic waste also affects marine life and poses a danger to the global fight to tackle climate change.

“I am very much aware that one of your ministers of interior (Greater Accra Regional Minister) was even challenging a house of God, a religious institution because they were building their church in ramsar site,” she said while adding that Collectively and globally over 35 percent of wetlands have been lost since the 1900s.

“Wetlands are declining three times faster than forests. We need to be cognizant of the fact that when they decline and shrink, we  are not going to have the water resources that we are supposed to be providing and this is where everybody has to get involved,” the Secretary-General intimated.

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The Geo Barents ship, run by charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), took onboard 558 people, mainly Africans, in eight separate operations off the coast of Libya in the last 11 days, the charity said.

They include 174 minors and a woman who is eight months pregnant.

The German charity boat Sea Watch 3 is also seeking a port to disembark 440 migrants it rescued in recent days in the Mediterranean, including women and young children.

“The weather deteriorates … Everyone has the right to disembark, now,” Sea Watch wrote on Twitter.

Italy has seen a sharp increase in boat migrants in recent months with the government struggling to secure an agreement with European Union partners over how to deal with the influx.

As of Dec. 28, 66,482 migrants have reached Italy so far this year against 34,134 in the same period of 2020, interior ministry data show.

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Despite no ship or object floating on the water, fire is seen blazing hot, as it spreads across other parts.

The sight left residents in awe as all they could do was film the act before dark smoke covers the atmosphere.

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The fire disturbed the recurring waves on that side, while the vast part of the sea appeared normal.

Video below:

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Vidam Perevertilov spent 14 hours in the water after he fell off the cargo ship into the Pacific Ocean in the early hours of the morning.

The 52-year-old, who was not wearing a life jacket, credits his decision to swim towards a “black dot” several kilometres away for saving his life.

It turned out to be a fishing buoy, which he held onto until his rescue.

“He looked about 20 years older and very tired but he was alive,” his son Marat told New Zealand news site Stuff.

Mr Perevertilov is the Lithuanian chief engineer of the Silver Supporter, which was making a supply run between New Zealand’s Tauranga port and the isolated British territory of Pitcairn.

Following a shift in the engine room pumping fuel, he had felt “hot and dizzy”, said his son. He then walked out onto the deck to recover at around 04:00 in the morning on 16 February, before falling.

Marat, who got details of his father’s survival tale via message chats, believes he may have fainted, as he does not remember going over.

Unaware that a man had fallen overboard, the ship sailed away.

After struggling to stay afloat until the sun rose, Mr Perevertilov noticed a black speck on the horizon and decided to swim towards it.

“It was not anchored to anything or a boat, it was just a piece of sea rubbish,” said Marat of the abandoned fishing buoy.

It took ship crew about six hours to notice that their engineer was missing, at which point the captain turned the ship around.

According to reports, the crew determined his approximate location by looking at Mr Perevertilov’s work logs, which showed that he was last onboard at 4:am. The ship’s coordinates at the time were about 400 nautical miles south of French Polynesia’s Austral Islands.

Distress messages were then radioed out to ships in the area. French navy aircraft joined the search from Tahiti, and France’s meteorological service studied the winds to calculate possible drift patterns.

But it would be his own vessel which would find him in the end.

When Mr Perevertilov finally saw his ship in the horizon, he waved and called out. Remarkably, one of the ship’s passengers heard the “weak, human shout”.

A lookout spotted a raised hand later on, and eventually pulled the sailor to safety on board.

“His will to survive was strong… I probably would have drowned straight away, but he always kept himself fit and healthy and that’s why I think he could survive,” said Marat.

The missing include a 55-year-old man, only known as Olu, who is reported to have gone missing while aboard a canoe named, Behoko, on September 9, 2019.

The canoe is said to have sailed from the Tema Canoe Basin with other crew members namely, Akei Allotey, Emmanuel Arthur, Noah Amponsah, Emmanuel Ashitie, Abraham Ogbey and Samson Amonkra.

The Crime Officer of the Marine Police in Tema, Superintendent Felix Charles Asare, who confirmed this to the Daily?Graphic, said about 30 minutes past midnight on September 9, 2019, the crew members on the canoe detected that Olu had gone missing, necessitating a search on suspicion that he could have drowned.

The crew, he said, however, returned to the canoe basin after a fruitless search and lodged a complaint with the Marine Police Unit.

The police, the crime officer said, had not been able to establish any sign of violence or incriminating evidence after a thorough search on the canoe.

Missing observer

Already, the Marine Police are investigating the mysterious disappearance of a Ghanaian fishing observer, Emmanuel Essien, who was said to have gone missing aboard a fishing vessel, MV Meng 25, on July 5, 2019.

Supt. Asare updating the Daily Graphic on the case, indicated that the Marine Police Unit was awaiting advice from the Attorney General’s department on what to do with the docket on Essien, aged 29.

He said the three Chinese crew members, namely Chief Officer Yue Changlin, Second Chief Officer Zheng Shipu and a cook, Yang Chanfu, who were aboard the vessel, together with 20 Ghanaian crew members with whom the missing observer, Essien, shared a cabin, had all been interrogated.

Disappearance

Essien, an employee of the Fisheries Commission, was assigned aboard the vessel on July 4, 2019 which set sail for operation from the Tema Fishing Harbour with a 26-member crew made up of 20 Chinese nationals and six Ghanaians, including Essien.

Supt. Asare said the Marine Unit got wind of the disappearance of Essien on July 6, 2019, after a report was made to it by the Operations Manager of Kenbonad Fisheries Company, Mr Samuel Ben Turkson.

The police, together with officials of the Ghana Immigration Service, Port Health, the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) and a private security firm, K9 Security, he said, had with the aid of sniffer dogs conducted thorough searches on board the fishing vessel, but “no sign of violence or anything incriminating was found.”

“The search was extended to the deck, stern, hatch, factory area and the engine room in an attempt to either locate Essien or see if there was any sign of violence, but nothing was found,” he added.

Investigations

The investigations, Supt. Asare said, revealed that the crew at about 7 p.m. on July 5, 2019 while operating in the Apam waters detected that Essien was not on the vessel, forcing the crew to suspend the fishing operations in search of him, suspecting he might have drowned but they were not successful.

He said the crew members told the police that they communicated to other fishing vessels along the same route, soliciting their assistance to search for the victim.

A search on the vessel by the police and stakeholders, the crime officer said, revealed that the belongings of Essien, made up of a fisheries documents, GN Bank savings and withdrawal booklet, a national ID card, passport pictures, a GT Bank ATM card, a phone tablet, an Alcatel mobile phone, reflective jackets and a pair of trousers among others were all intact in his cabin.

Supt. Asare said some crew members also confirmed that they last saw Essien at about 8 p.m. on July 4, 2019.

“A Chinese cook onboard the vessel, Yang Changfu, who said he was on duty on the bridge, told us during our investigations that when he closed and came to sleep, the cabin mates had pulled their curtains to cover their beds, an indication that everyone was asleep, hence, he could not look on the beds to see who was asleep and who wasn’t,” Supt. Asare stated.

The crew members, he said, had since been interrogated and their caution statements taken from them individually, “but none have been able to explain at what point in time Essien left the vessel”, Supt Asare stated.

Source: Daily Graphic

Malouins voyaged as far as Québec (the voyages of Jacques Cartier – a Malouin – led to France laying claim to Canada) and the Falkland Islands (originally named Îles Malouines in honour of early Malouin settlers).

In 1590, St-Malo declared independence from France in an effort to protect its maritime economy from the Wars of Religion, adopting the motto, ‘Not French, not Breton, but Malouin’. Although the autonomous Republic of St-Malo only lasted for three years, the Malouin identity continued in a spirit of unbridled self-determination, inextricably anchored to the sea.

We’ve got ‘la terre et la mer’ that blend to help our chefs create extraordinary cuisine. It’s simple, precise and invigorating

Heude continued to place wine on the sea floor every year, gathering his friends to taste the previous year’s bounty. Beyond the initial resonance of the idea of sea-aging wine, there’s also a science to the process that Heude and his friends pegged with sheer intuition. Off the coast of Brittany, the temperature of the ocean floor hovers at 9-10C – the equivalent temperature of a deep wine cellar – while the water shields the wine from damaging UV rays. Plus, the twice-daily ebb and flow of some of the biggest tides in Europe mirror a technique used to age wine, particularly Champagne, known as remuage. The process of slowly tilting wine as it ages keeps the sediment from settling on the sides and bottom of the bottle and maintains the visual clarity of the wine.

The wines Heude selects change every year, though he is sure to include bottles of both regular and sparkling, and the differences in flavour of sea-aged wines varies by cuvée (the type, blend and batch of wine), which is the fun of it all. As a rule of thumb, Heude says, wines that have only been lightly filtered are poised for the most remarkable transformations underwater. As the tides move the natural sediment in the bottle, the flavour notes of the wine deepen. The effect is particularly enthralling with sparkling wine, as the changing tides refine the carbon dioxide bubbles to a crisp finish.

After discovering the effects of sea-aging, Heude decided to make annual wine deposits to the harbour floor. Every year, on the first weekend of June, 100 gourmands and sommeliers from across France purchase tickets to experience the phenomenon in person.

The day-long affair begins with l’Immersion itself. Curious tourists watch as Heude and his team load up a fishing boat with nearly 700 wine bottles in the shadow of Tour Solidor, a 14th-Century tower originally built to control the entrance to the Rance river. Wine bottles are stacked in pallet boxes built for shellfish producers – fitting for a ritual so intimately tied to the local food culture. Extra holes in each box ensure water and seaweed can flow around the bottles during their year-long sojourn at the bottom of the bay. “We saddle them up, and then they’re ready to go,” Heude said.

Off the coast of Brittany, the temperature of the ocean floor hovers at 9-10C, the equivalent temperature of a deep wine cellar (Credit: Emmanuel Donfut/Balao)

Once they’ve been brought out into the harbour, the boxes are lowered 15m to the sea floor with a trawler. A diver loosely anchors the boxes with enough leeway for each one to move in harmony with the tides. Then they pick up last year’s drop off (this year’s haul) in preparation for a boisterous unveiling. After 12 months of anticipation, Heude and his team push each box to the centre of the crowd. Extra treasures – shellfish, handfuls of seaweed – swirl around the barnacle-laden bottles, giving everyone a glimpse of what the bottles witness during a year on the sea floor.

During l’Immersion, attendees are invited to taste the sea-aged wines, along with other local specialties, including bread and oysters (Credit: Yannick Heude)

After the wine tasting, participants who purchased tickets for l’Immersion in advance of the festival accompany the coastguard organisation Société Nationale de Sauvetage en Mer (SNSM) on a short journey to Cézembre, a small, uninhabited blip of sand off the coast of St-Malo that served as a German naval battery in World War Two. Most of its sweeping landscape remains enclosed by barbed wire because the island’s innermost areas haven’t been cleared of land mines, but the shore provides a safe and scenic venue for a riotous Malouin feast. Plates of fried seafood and salt-marsh lamb pile up next to more butter, freshly baked bread and bottles of sea-aged wine, still dripping with salty water. “That’s a little more rock’n’roll. It’s a big party and everyone loves that, too,” Heude said.

At its heart, l’Immersion is much more than a wine tasting. It’s a celebration of Malouins’ unceasing connection to the sea.

“That’s what has cradled us since our infancy, and at the end of the day, we can’t do without it,” Heude said. “Whether it’s in the arts or in food, it’s in everything: it’s there in wine tastings, in the shrimp, in the scallops, in the fish we catch, in the spring vegetables, in new potatoes. We’ve got it all here. We’ve truly got it all.”