- Samuel Abayateye, a 38-year-old fisheries observer from Ghana, vanished from the Marine 707 in 2023 while monitoring tuna catches. Six weeks later, a mutilated body washed ashore near his home, but authorities have never released DNA results or an autopsy report.
- Fisheries observers like Abayateye work alone at sea to record catches and report illegal practices, often among the very crews they monitor. Their role is vital to enforcing fishing laws but exposes them to isolation, threats, and violence.
- His disappearance echoes that of Emmanuel Essien, another observer who vanished after documenting illegal fishing on a Chinese-owned trawler. Both cases remain unsolved, part of a global pattern in which at least one observer dies or disappears each year.
- Ghana’s government still mandates observers on every industrial vessel, yet offers them little protection—no insurance, secure contracts, or emergency communication. Abayateye’s family continues to seek answers, while his body, if it is his, remains unburied.
He was sent to sea to watch others. To count the fish, record their fate, and make sure no one took more than they should. The job was meant to be routine: clipboard, samples, and a small bunk on a ship. Instead, it was perilous. Two years ago, somewhere off Ghana’s coast, the watcher disappeared.
He was last seen aboard the Marine 707, a Ghana-flagged tuna vessel owned by World Marine Company Ltd. The crew said he had been there the night before, sleeping upright in a chair. In the morning he was gone. Six weeks later, a body missing its head, forearms, and feet washed ashore near Anyamam, his home village. The family recognized the shirt and a scar on the chest. The police took the body and promised a DNA test. Since then, they have said nothing.
The watcher’s name was Samuel Abayateye, 38, a father of two. He was a fisheries observer, one of a small group of civilians assigned by Ghana’s Fisheries Commission to monitor industrial vessels at sea. They are meant to serve as the state’s eyes. The work is isolated and often tense. Observers live among the crews they are meant to report on, sometimes for weeks. The greater danger is not the sea itself, but what happens when an observer witnesses something he should not ignore.
His brother, Yohane Abayateye, told Mongabay contributor Awudu Salami Sulemana Yoda that the family has received no formal updates from the police or any other agency. The results of the DNA test have never been shared.
Yoda said the family strongly believes the body belonged to Abayateye. “We need his body from the police for burial,” Yohane told Yoda for a series about the observer’s disappearance.
Four years before Samuel vanished, another observer, Emmanuel Essien, disappeared from a Chinese-owned trawler after filming the crew catching juvenile fish—an illegal practice known as saiko. His body was never found. Both cases remain unresolved.
Observers are meant to be the sentinels of the sea. They record what vessels catch, where they fish, and whether the rules are followed. The data they gather underpins Ghana’s fisheries management. Yet the job has become increasingly dangerous. Many industrial vessels operating under the Ghanaian flag are partly foreign-owned, and reports of illegal fishing, intimidation, and abuse at sea are common. To document such violations can invite retaliation.
Globally, at least one fisheries observer has died or disappeared every year since 2009. Some were confirmed dead, others simply went missing. There are no comprehensive records, no binding international protocols, and few investigations.
“The risk of clubbing and throwing a fishery observer overboard,” one conservationist remarked, “can be far less than the cost of being caught.”
In Ghana, an estimated three million people rely on fishing for their livelihoods. Yet overfishing, illegal practices, and opaque ownership structures have pushed many coastal communities toward crisis. Industrial fleets—often operating with foreign partners—use undersized nets, fish during closed seasons, and transfer catches illegally at sea. As the fish decline, so does income, food security, and trust in the authorities.
Abayateye knew the risks. He had grown up near the lagoon where the body was later found. His grandfather and cousin also worked in the fishing industry; the cousin, a fellow observer, reportedly died under mysterious circumstances in 2022. Days before his disappearance, Samuel called his brother to say he was trying to reach his supervisor in Tema to report an incident on board the Marine 707.
“He was trying… to report an incident,” Yohane said. He could not reach them.
Police told the family the DNA sample from Samuel’s mother had been sent to a laboratory in South Africa. They have not released the results or the autopsy report.
“They should have known within the first week,” said Elizabeth Mitchell-Rachin of the Association for Professional Observers, a U.S.-based nonprofit. “They should have been able to tell the source of the mutilations of the body.” Instead, nothing.
In Fatal Watch, a 2025 documentary about fisheries observers who have died or gone missing, Abayateye’s story appears alongside others: an I-Kiribati observer found with a head injury, a Papua New Guinean lost overboard, an American who vanished from a Panamanian ship. None of those cases led to prosecutions.
Ghana’s fisheries ministry still requires every industrial vessel to carry an observer. The rule exists to ensure transparency. Yet the observers who enforce it have little protection—no secure contracts, no guaranteed insurance, and no independent line of communication when at sea. Many are paid by the companies they monitor. Some now refuse assignments; others accept them in fear.
“It seems there is pattern that anytime [an] observer goes missing, the government failed to act,” one observer said.
For Abayateye’s family, the uncertainty remains. The body that washed ashore two years ago lies unclaimed in a police hospital. The investigation continues, at least on paper. And the sea keeps its secrets.
Credits
