Too often migrants disappear without a trace and witnesses. While accurate figures on the number of deaths do not exist, entire boats have gone missing in the Atlantic, becoming what are known as “invisible shipwrecks.”

** This is the problem …

Like other local fishermen, Dieye was struggling to survive on earnings of roughly 20,000 CFA francs ($33) a month.

“There are no fish left in the ocean,” Dieye laments.

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.