Too often migrants disappear without a trace and witnesses
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.
But the wooden boat carrying 101 men and boys was getting blown further and further away from its destination.
No land was in sight. Yet four men believed — or hallucinated — they could swim to shore. They picked up empty water containers and wooden planks — anything to help them float. And one by one, they leapt.
Dozens more would do the same before disappearing into the ocean. The migrants still in the boat watched as their brothers faded. Those who died onboard were tossed into the ocean until the survivors had no energy left and bodies began accumulating.
On day 36, a Spanish fishing vessel spotted them. 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.
For 38 men and boys, it was salvation. For the other 63, it was too late.
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'Massive cargo ships passed the would-be migrants by almost every day, destabilizing their shaky wooden canoe-like boat, known as a pirogue. No one came to their rescue. Under international law, captains are required “to render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being lost.” But the law is hard to enforce. ’
Words fail.
eh, it doesnt really surprise me that much. some cargo vessels have a lot of amenities but the vast majority do not and absorbing 40+ people, all of which are unvetted/a security risk? they’re not equipped to handle that.
yes, it’s a commercial problem, as you point out - however it’s appalling to leave people completely without assistance if they are in obvious peril at sea. Rendering assistance need not obligate them to bring them aboard - but some basic humanity would dictate to not just abandon them to die. But of course there is stuff to deliver and schedules to meet - business is business…
they said they left home because the fish are gone.
This is what comes up searching for their town, Fass Boye:
A waste of fish: Food security under threat from the fishmeal and fish oil industry in West Africa’ is a 2019 report into food security in the region. Greenpeace Africa is calling on governments to immediately phase it out to stop the threat to regional fish stocks, which are essential for the food security and livelihoods of local people.
https://media.greenpeace.org/collection/27MZIFJ82G50O
"So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race."
Senegalese fisherman Papa Dieye was struggling to survive on earnings of 20,000 CFA francs ($33) a month. “There are no fish left in the ocean,” he laments.
Years of overfishing by industrial vessels from Europe, China and Russia had wiped out Senegalese fishermen’s livelihoods — pushing them to desperate measures.
“We want to work to build houses for our mothers, little brothers and sisters,” he explains.
Big business across the globe caused this. It’s not like these people leave their homes because dying in the ocean is such a good thing to look forward to.
It’s sadly not widely known, but the infamous Somalian pirates also were just fishermen whose claims were illegally overfished by big international fishing vessels. They took matters into their own hands since their state failed and they tried to police their own waters, which got them labelled as pirates. After the fish dried out, and they were pirates either way, that’s how their way of life started.
And now these people face extinction through climate change.
