Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 11th of July 2017

Case name: 2017_07_11-WM146
Situation: 11 travellers paddling from Morocco to Spain, rescued to Tarifa
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Tuesday, the 11th of July 2017, at 6am, we received a call about 10 travellers on a rubber boat without an engine. They were trying to paddle from Morocco to Spain. They had left at about 1am from Tanger, Morocco and were in distress, according to our contact person. We immediately reached out to the travellers, who told us that they were 11 passengers, including 2 women, and in urgent need of assistance. The person on the boat told us that they had been in the sea for about 5 hours. We immediately called the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo (S.M.). They promised to check on the boat. We tried to call the travellers again to tell them that S.M. was looking for them, but we could not reach them. At 6.41am, the travellers called us, urgently asking for help. They could see a white fishing boat. We called S.M. again and informed them about the fisher boat. S.M. told us that they had tried to call the travellers, but had not reached them. We called back the travellers, asking them to get in touch directly with S.M. At 7.50 the travellers gave us more detailed information about the fishing boat, but we did not understand whether or not they had called S.M. Meanwhile we could see on Marinetraffic that an S.M. helicopter and a vessel were looking for the travellers. At 9.30 S.M. told us that the Moroccan Navy had rescued a boat with 11 persons on board and that they had finished the search mission. A few minutes later however, when we called the travellers, we learned that they had not been rescued. We asked them to send us their GPS position, and they send us a position, but it was not correct. We nevertheless passed on the position to S.M. and informed them that 'our' boat was still waiting for rescue. Around noon, S.M. started another search mission for the boat and actually found them. At 12.42 the travellers confirmed to us that they were being picked up by S.M. We later found a facebook post which probably referred to this case. It said that S.M. had rescued 11 persons and were expected to arrive in Tarife around 2.20pm.