Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 25th of December 2020
Case name: 2020_12_25-WM546
Situation: Boat carrying five people in the Alboran rescued to Motril by the Guardia Civil.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Friday the 25th of December in the early hours of the morning, the Alarm Phone shift team was alerted by a relative to a group of five people in distress in the Alboran Sea. The travellers had left from Al Hoceima on the 24th at around 07.00-08.00 CET and were travelling on a small rubber boat in direction of Nerja. The relative had not had contact to the boat since they departed. Despite trying many times, our shift team never managed to reach the travellers directly. At 06.42 CET we called the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo and passed on the information we had about the travellers. In addition, we published a tweet about the ongoing cases we had in the Western Mediterranean and Atlantic:
“4 boats in distress in the Western Med and Atlantic!

- Two boats with 56 & 8 people, heading to #CanaryIslands have been missing for 2 days.
- Two boats with 30 & 5 people heading to #Spain departed yesterday & have not arrived yet.

We hope they will be searched & rescued soon”

At 10.07 CET we spoke to Salvamento Maritimo again. They told us that the travellers had not been rescued according to their knowledge, but stated that they could not commence a search and rescue operation without having further information about the travellers’ location. When we half an hour later asked for the possibility of sending an aircraft to look for the travellers, they refused this as long as they did not receive a position of the boat, despite the fact that the travellers at this point had been at sea for more than 24 hours. Throughout the day we were not able to obtain any more information. Only in the evening at 18.28 CET did we get the information from Salvamento Maritimo that the travellers had been rescued by the Guardia Civil and brought to Motril. This information was confirmed less than 10 minutes later by the relative, who had spotted one of their loved ones in a picture of the rescue operation published online.