The coast of death is a coastline filled with shipwrecks in Galicia, northwest Spain. It’s a wild, atmospheric landscape on the very edge of Europe. As their ancestors did before them, Galician fishermen go every day into the deep, cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Some of them may not come back.

Unemployment in Spain has long been the highest within the European Union, and within Spain, Galicia has traditionally been one of the poorer regions—a fact that has pushed its people to risk their lives at sea for centuries.

The percebes, the most expensive shellfish in the world, grow along the coastal cliffs but flourish most where the waves are highest and the wind is fiercest. Once on the rocks, the harvester can easily get clobbered by a breaker or simply slip into the sea. The brutal waves that the barnacles filter for their food wash barnacle fishermen to their deaths so regularly that the local marine rescue service cringes every time they get a call.

Atlantes portrays the way of life of the seamen on the Coast of Death—people who, day by day, face the possibility of losing everything, even their own lives.