The voyage from the struggling Senegalese fishing town of Fass Boye to Spain’s Canary Islands, a gateway to the European Union where they hoped to find work, was supposed to take a week.
It was Aug. 14 and they were 290 kilometers (180 miles) northeast of Cape Verde, the last cluster of islands in the eastern central Atlantic Ocean before the vast nothingness that separates West Africa from the Caribbean.
As the number of people leaving Senegal for Spain this year surged to record levels, the Associated Press spoke to dozens of survivors, rescuers, aid workers and officials to understand what the men endured at sea, and why, despite their traumatic experience, many are willing to risk their lives again.
Years of overfishing by larger industrial vessels from Europe, China and Russia had wiped out Senegalese fishermen’s livelihoods, reducing their previously abundant catch to a few small crates of fish — if they were lucky — and pushing them to take desperate measures.
When the opportunity to board a boat to Spain came up, he asked his older brother to sell the family cows back home to help him pay the 400,000 CFA ($665) for a spot, close to what he would earn in a year.
Their case made international headlines and sparked debate on Senegalese television over the cost of “clandestine migration.” A generation of young men, and some women and children too, were dying at sea or capsizing along the northwest African coast.
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