Felipe Dana and Renata Brito won the Africa Open Format category of the 2024 World Press Photo Contest. Their winning project was prompted by a grim discovery off the coast of Tobago in May 2021: a Mauritanian boat full of dead men. The two journalists set out to investigate.
Many migrant vessels taking the frequently used but increasingly treacherous Atlantic Ocean route from West Africa to Europe never arrive. Caught in the dangerous currents, they find themselves adrift and end up as “ghost ships” in the Caribbean.
Dana and Brito’s visual investigation gathers forensic evidence through a network of sources across three continents to identify one of the men on the May 2021 “ghost ship” as Alassane Sow, bringing closure to his family in Mali.
Young fishermen walk into the ocean to board an artisanal fishing boat in Nouakchott in Mauritania.
Residents walk around the central market area in Selibaby.
The wreck of a pirogue lies on a beach near Nouadhibou, Mauritania. Many migrants use such vessels to reach Spain’s Canary Islands.
Moussa Sako from Mali had never seen the sea before he boarded the boat he would be rescued from 22 days later, adrift in the Atlantic.
Djibi Koume – son of Oumar Koume, left – was among the 43 people who boarded the ill-fated boat that was found drifting off Tobago four months later.
A mortuary worker opens the door of a refrigerator used to store the remains of the migrants recovered from the Tobago ‘ghost ship’.
Some of the clothing found on the deceased migrants.
Journalist Brito texts Alassane Sow’s aunt, May Sow, to check if a button-down shirt found among the remains, belonged to her nephew. A DNA test later confirmed that the shirt belonged to Alassane Sow.
