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Paper short abstract

Canary waters contrast the Blue economy with deadly migration. Mapping the "stealth" of wooden migrant boats against hyper-visible cargo/cruise ships and ports, I argue that aquapelagic necropolitics are activated to render the Atlantic a technologically stratified sea & a moving, swallowing actant.

Paper long abstract

The Canary Islands are a vital node for the "licit" Blue Economy, characterized by high-frequency maritime traffic, digital tracking, and sophisticated port infrastructures. Yet, these same Atlantic waters constitute the most mortiferous "illicit" migration corridor globally. This paper explores the *(il)licit sea* not as a neutral void, but as a living space that is technologically stratified. It contrasts the hyper-visibility of commercial logistics — evident in Las Palmas's industrial port, massive cruise ships, or ferry routes, all governed by Automatic Identification System (AIS) — with the "stealth" materiality of migrant boats or *cayucos*. Usually made of wood or fibreglass, they are sometimes detected by Spain's border surveillance system but often simply discerned by larger ships and later rescued; or left to drift carrying mummified corpses. Since migrants aim at entering the EU's ultraperipheral, securitized territorial waters undetected to avoid early interceptions, this invisibility is strategic yet reflects the violence of borders.  

Drawing on insights from fieldwork, critical logistics and island studies, I expand Iranzo and Dupain's (2025) argument that the Atlantic Ocean is activated through *aquapelagic necropolitics*. While maritime infrastructures ensure the frictionless circulation of goods, seafarers, and tourists, they enact a form of infrastructural exclusion by being unable to salvage irregularized migrants. The cayuco is a digital blind spot in a sea of steel and data. I employ visual methods and AIS data to visualize this spatial (non-)overlap, where cruises and cargo ships traverse the same coordinates where migrant bodies are swallowed by a moving and living Atlantic cemetery.