How Young Senegalese Fishermen Die at sea trying to migrate to Europe

The exact number of days Adama and Moussa Sarr had been at sea was unknown to them.

The brothers were in a pirogue, a traditional Senegalese fishing canoe, and they were lost at sea off the coast of West Africa. They were two of the ship’s 39 famished and near-dead passengers.

Adama, then 21 years old, said he was too weak to do anything but stare when he saw a fishing boat appear in the distance one day. Moussa, who was 17 at the time, quietly entered the pool.

If the fishing crew hadn’t seen him in the water and pulled him out, he would have drowned.

Adama and the other survivors were aboard the pirogue, along with seven bodies, when they were discovered. Five weeks prior, with 101 people on board, the pirogue had left Senegal.

The survivors had made their way across the North Atlantic, from Senegal to the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago located roughly 1,000 miles away, by drifting for hundreds of miles.

They had left the coastal town of Fass Boye on July 10th. Both Adama and Moussa’s ancestors in the village were fishermen. Together, the boys learned to fish and navigate a pirogue.

Many young people in Senegal, however, share their desire to travel to Europe. “Everyone wants to go on the boats,” Adama remarked. It’s the right thing to do, so you should.

Back in Senegal, but much thinner, he sat in the shade of a family home’s courtyard. He said they had set out at nightfall. He and his friend Moussa hopped on board the pirogue with their cousins Pape, 40, and Amsoutou, 20, as it set sail into the night.

There are no patrols in the North Atlantic, unlike in the Mediterranean, so no one is actively looking for missing or sinking vessels. It’s simple to fail without anyone noticing. You can vanish into the Atlantic if you fail to reach the Canaries or Cape Verde.

Adama and Moussa spent the first three days rowing against strong headwinds while propelled by an outboard motor. Adama said that on the fourth day, the wind subsided and the boat made some progress. The passengers thought they would only be at sea for a couple more days.

After six days at sea with no sign of land, the debate over whether to continue on escalated.

Adama reported that the captain had decided that they should continue on because they had plenty of supplies and the wind was calm.

He said the passengers regained their composure and started gorging themselves on food, and they even used the ship’s supply of potable water to wash their hands before praying.

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On day six, supplies of both food and water started to run low. There were four kids on board, so the adults shared their last bites with them. The death toll didn’t stop some people from stockpiling.

Adama stated that the first fatality occurred sometime after the first week had passed, and that it was a fishing captain who was no stranger to the sea but certainly wasn’t a spring chicken. The next death wouldn’t occur for another six days. Then, daily deaths became the norm.

“Initially, we prayed over each body as we threw it into the sea,” Adama recalled. Later, when we were too exhausted to pray, we simply dumped the bodies into the river. The bodies had to be disposed of, that was all.

The villagers of Fass Boye had begun to hear that the boat had failed to show up. “We all knew it should be five or six days by boat to Spain,” Sokhna, Adama’s mother, said. After a week of waiting for word, I gave up eating. The strain got to me, and I got sick.

All the passengers seemed to know each other and most were locals from Fass Boye or the surrounding area. The families did what they could, informing authorities and migration NGOs. Even after the founder of an NGO tweeted a warning that the boat was missing two weeks after its departure, no one seemed to care and the boat drifted for another three weeks.

The four men in the pirogue stuck together, but they were losing strength rapidly. Adama said that the oldest cousin, Pape, passed away first. ‘If death must happen, I wish that I die and you three survive,’ he said before he passed.

Amsoutou, Adama’s younger cousin, vanished at that time. They awoke one morning to find that Amsoutou was missing.

Adama and Moussa persisted, cooling off with ocean water and basking in the sun. They kept waiting for the Canary Islands’ lights to appear each night, but they never did.

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It appeared that no one in Fass Boye disapproved of the migrants’ decision to take a chance. According to the World Bank, more than one-third of the population is poor. In this country, young people have few opportunities. Assane Niang, a 23-year-old fishing captain, said, “Macky Sall sold the ocean,” referring to the president of Senegal. Local fishermen in Fass Boye complain that their catch has been depleted because the government has issued too many licences to foreign trawlers.

Niang was seen sitting under a pirogue on the beach, knitting generator covers to sell. To paraphrase, “If we had other options we would stay, but we cannot sit here and do nothing,” he said. To quote one of the members of the group: “We are trying to support our families.”

Young people face societal pressure to make the dangerous journey across the ocean on the boats, and those who don’t make the attempt may be stigmatised for the rest of their lives.

The Wolof language of Senegal has a morbid slang phrase for the sea route to Spain: “Barcelona or death.”

The smugglers’ wooden pirogues are not seaworthy. They usually have shoddy construction. They can easily get lost due to a lack of navigational aids like fuel gauges and compass systems. However, the annual increase in the number of migrants using this route to reach Spain continues.

About 68,000 people have made it to the Canary Islands from West Africa by boat since January 2020, but around 2,700 have died trying or have vanished en route. Fatal accidents are more likely to go unreported on this route, so the actual number of casualties is likely much higher.

Safa Msehli, an IOM spokesperson, described these situations as “invisible shipwrecks.” In both cases, “a boat washes ashore with nobody aboard,” or “a body washes ashore not linked to a known capsized boat.”

Abdou Karim, a lifelong fisherman and the father of Pape Sarr, who died on the boat, said that one of the problems was that the people leaving Fass Boye, especially the fishermen, were too confident in their chances.

A lot of fishermen believe they can swim out of trouble, he said. Nonetheless, there is a cap. You can’t keep swimming forever. The sea can’t keep you down.

Young Fass Boye fishermen have stated that they are willing to take the risk anyway.

Niang, the beachside fisherman, said, “I am thinking about going on a boat right now.” Tragedies won’t prevent us from making an effort.

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After about a month at sea, Adama and Moussa spotted a large ship on the horizon, prompting more than 20 people to risk drowning. However, he was aware that the distance was insufficient.

He said that many of the remaining survivors could barely walk. Then, on August 14—exactly five weeks after they had left—they spotted the Spanish fishing boat that would eventually come to their rescue.

The seven bodies were wrapped in plastic by the Spanish crew who assisted the passengers. Adama and Moussa shared a nap on the fishing boat’s deck.

They had made it out of the pirogue alive. Yet Moussa was simply too frail. Out of the 63 people who passed away during the trip, he was the last.

It was on the deck, Adama said, that the man passed away. In plain sight, as it were.

After six days in Cape Verde for medical care, most of the survivors were flown back to Dakar. Those who were mobile were prescribed medication and returned to Fass Boye.

There was a brief outbreak of violence in the village after word of the death toll spread, prompting the police to arrive. A family member of Adama and Moussa’s was among those detained.

Residents and relatives of the deceased reportedly hounded survivors in their homes out of curiosity. They were all sent away from Fass Boye the day after they returned home to rest. Sokhna, Adama’s mother, and he visited some relatives. They were taking it easy, going to church, and praying rather than bothering Adama with questions about his ordeal.

Three sons had been lost, but one was returned to the family. Fass Boye had watched 101 people leave for sea and only 37 return.

Abdou Karim, Pape’s father, said as he silently counted prayer beads with one hand, “It changes a place.”

“Even a single life is a great deal,” he remarked. And this is over 60 years old. It’s a lot to cram into one area.