The rescue of 112 migrants who were left adrift off the coast of Dakar, Senegal has drawn widespread attention. Yet behind this narrowly averted tragedy lies a darker reality: the Atlantic route has become one of the world’s deadliest migration corridors. With rising unemployment, a deepening fishing crisis, increased repression and a lack of sustainable solutions, the Atlantic continues to reflect the impasse of migration.

On Tuesday, 16 September 2025, a Senegalese fisherman raised the alarm after discovering a wooden pirogue without an engine, carrying 112 exhausted passengers drifting at sea. The navy intervened just in time to prevent a shipwreck. While this rescue highlights an act of solidarity, it also exposes a more troubling truth: the Atlantic route remains a death trap for thousands of migrants attempting to reach Europe.

Used since the early 2000s, the route from West Africa to the Canary Islands has seen fluctuating numbers of migrants, depending on border controls and local crises. After peaking in 2006 with more than 30,000 arrivals in the Canary Islands, departures declined. However, in recent years, the route has once again become one of the busiest. In 2024 alone, over 46,000 migrants reached the Spanish archipelago – a new record. Behind these figures lies a silent catastrophe: the NGO Caminando Fronteras estimates that more than 10,000 people died or went missing on this route last year alone.

Root causes and deadly risks

People continue to make the dangerous crossing to the Canary Islands, driven by a combination of powerful factors.

High unemployment, poverty, and a lack of prospects for young people, particularly in coastal areas, are the main economic forces fuelling this exodus. Fishing, the primary source of income for thousands of families, is in crisis due to dwindling resources, overfishing and the effects of climate change. Added to these difficulties are local tensions, instability in certain regions and above all, the enduring lure of Europe. For more than two decades, the Canary Islands, the gateway to Spain, have symbolized a dream of a better life.

But this dream comes at a price. Migrants embark on overloaded, poorly equipped canoes, sometimes without engines, leaving them completely vulnerable on the high seas. Hostile weather conditions, days of sailing without water or food and captains abandoning their vessels mid-journey turn each departure into a gamble with life itself. The luckiest are intercepted or rescued. Many disappear in invisible shipwrecks.

Institutional efforts amid a shifting phenomenon 

Faced with this crisis, the Senegalese government has sought to respond. Increased patrols, the arrest of smugglers, and interceptions at sea led to more than 5,000 migrants being stopped in 2024. An interministerial committee has even been established to combat irregular migration and coordinate these efforts. However, these measures have struggled to curb the phenomenon. Worse still, migrants are now taking even longer and more perilous routes, further increasing the risks for those attempting the journey.

In this security vacuum, local fishermen have become – whether they wish or not – the first witnesses, and sometimes the only rescuers.

The tragedy averted off the coast of Dakar highlights the limits of an approach focused almost exclusively on control and repression. Without structural solutions, the cycle simply repeats itself: arrests, displacement to new departure points and ever-longer, more dangerous crossings. Yet, solutions do exist. Investing in youth employment, providing economic alternatives for fishermen, strengthening regional cooperation based on solidarity and placing respect for human rights at the heart of migration policies could help ease the pressure. Otherwise, the pirogues will continue to set sail, and each rescue will remain a fragile victory against a backdrop of tragedy. As long as young people see exile as their only prospect and the sea as their only route, the Atlantic will continue to claim lives. It is not the sea that kills, but the lack of solutions on land.