It was nighttime, and a light drizzle soaked the docks at the Breton port of Lorient, in western France. In the city's cold fishmongers' halls, the first workers were already starting their shifts. Laborers prepared the conveyor lines, getting them ready to receive the day's catch. Outside, the crew of the trawler Côte-d'Ambre was about to set out for 10 days at sea. From April to the end of August, it was langoustine season. "Bouba isn't here, even though he's usually the first to arrive," said the ship's captain, Laurent Tréguier, 52, as he finished refueling the ship. The tardy crew member finally showed up, having been delayed by a broken alarm clock. Rushing onto the boat, Bouba Diouf Sagna, 47, took up his position alongside his four colleagues and began carrying out the routine tasks that came before setting out to sea. They had to leave the port at 3 am.

Sagna, who hails from Bétanti, a coastal town in southern Senegal, has been part of the Côte-d'Ambre's crew for over five years now. "For about 15 years, we've been struggling to find staff because the job no longer attracts people. It's physical work, and the comfort is relative," said Tréguier. "We would still manage to find guys, more or less trained, but when my brother and I bought the boat in 2019, we needed to run more trips, so we had to hire. I noticed Senegalese men walking along the docks with résumés, and I first hired Doudou. He had already been working in France for several years."

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