How seven Ghanaian fishermen survived nearly two weeks at sea without food

Kwamena Nkum, 29, said the fishermen exhausted their food and water supplies five days after the engine failure. They survived by eating fish they caught and eventually resorted to burning wood from their canoe to cook after running out of charcoal.

The seven fishermen, all from Sekondi, set out on a fishing expedition to Axim in the Western Region on October 9, 2026, aboard a canoe named Second Chance. Their trip took a dangerous turn on the third day when the outboard motor stopped working and attempts to repair it failed.

“We usually spend five days at sea but this time, our motor became faulty on the third day. It just went off, we tried to fix it but it didn’t work. Our food and water got finished. We were drinking sea water. We boiled the water to reduce the salt concentration,” Nkum recounted.

He said the fishermen initially relied on their catch for food, but some of the fish went bad and had to be discarded. They then used hooks and lines to catch fresh fish to eat.

“We were also eating the fish we had harvested but at a point they went bad and so we had to dispose them. We used some of them with our hook and line to catch fresh fish to eat,” he said.

Nkum explained that although they had fuel and matches, they eventually ran out of charcoal and resorted to burning wood from the canoe to cook.

After drifting for several days, the fishermen sighted land in the night. One of them, who was still awake, alerted the others.

“We switched on our phones and received a call later from home from a friend called Kingsley. We then got in contact with our fishing leaders as we tried to tell them our location. We thought we were in Togo but we were rather in Benin. We had no food left. We were very hungry,” he said.

According to Nkum, Kingsley and the fishermen’s leaders contacted the chief fisherman in Benin, who brought them food and water. The fishermen were later assisted by local fishermen and the Beninese and Togolese navies.

The seven were handed over to the Ghana Navy by a Togolese naval vessel at the Ghana-Togo maritime border on October 21. They subsequently arrived safely at the Fishing Harbour in Tema following the joint search-and-rescue operation.

The fishermen were Kofi Emmanuel, 32; Uncle Amoah, 45; Kwamena Nkum, 29; Kofi Aboagye, 36; Doboa, 35; Agya Badu, 42; and Kwamena Akyem, 40.

Reflecting on the ordeal, Nkum said they should have taken a second outboard motor as a backup in case of an emergency.