Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 31st of May 2017

Case name: 2017_05_31-WM138
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to 2 emergency situations in the Western Med
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Wednesday the 31st of May 2017, the WatchTheMed Alarm Phone was alerted to two distress situations in the Western Mediterranean Sea. At 2.40pm, a contact person in Morocco informed us about a plastic vessel that had left from Nador/Morocco with 32 people on board. Due to limited information available, our shift team could not directly support the travellers, who were shortly after rescued to Spain.

In the evening, at 8.35pm, the same contact person informed us about a second boat that had left from Nador, already during the night, at approximately 3am, carrying 33 people, including 2 women. He was concerned as he had not heard from them for quite some time. However, also in this case, no direct contact to the group could be established. In a phone conversation with the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo at 1.40am, we were informed that a rescue operation was ongoing. The Spanish authorities told us that they knew of one boat carrying about 32 people as well as another rubber boat that had reached Alboran Island, a small Spanish island located in the Western Mediterranean Sea. While unable to verify whether this was the boat in question, we passed these information on to our contact person in Morocco. At 3.26am he confirmed that they had been rescued from the island. Later we learned that there were three boats in total that had been rescued to Spain that day.