04/08: 54 travellers gone missing on their way to the Canary Islands

05.08.2021 / 20:15 / Atlantic Sea

Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 4th August 2021
Case name: 2021_08_04-WM659
Situation: 54 travellers missing in the Atlantic after trying to reach Fuerteventura. Spanish and Moroccan rescue authorities looking for days without results.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean

Summary On Wednesday the 4th of August 2021 shortly before midnight, the Alarm Phone shift team was contacted by a relative to a boat in distress in the Atlantic Sea. Onboard were 54 travellers, including 11 women of which three were pregnant and three children. The travellers had left from a beach between Laayoune and Boujdour around 24 hours previously, heading for Fuerteventura on a grey and black rubber boat, and their relatives had lost contact to them. At 00.09 CEST we sent an email to the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvalmento Maritimo, passing on all information we had about the boat. Salvamento Maritimo confirmed via phone that they would be looking for the boat with an aircraft later that day.
Over the following many days we continuously attempted reaching different phone numbers of the travellers without success. We stayed in close contact with many relatives who were getting increasingly more anxious as time passed. We also stayed in contact with both Spanish and Moroccan rescue authorities who were looking for the boat, but according to our information never rescued a boat that matched the description.
Eventually, we had to close the case without knowing the fate of the travellers who remain missing. If we find out more about what happened to this boat, we will update this report.

Credibility:

Border police patrols
While the exact location of patrols is of course constantly changing, this line indicates the approximate boundary routinely patrolled by border guards’ naval assets. In the open sea, it usually correspond to the outer extent of the contiguous zone, the area in which “State may exercise the control necessary to prevent infringement of its customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws” (UNCLOS, art. 33). Data source: interviews with border police officials.
Coastal radars
Approximate radar beam range covered by coastal radars operating in the frame of national marine traffic monitoring systems. The actual beam depends from several different parameters (including the type of object to be detected). Data source: Finmeccanica.
Exclusive Economic Zone
Maritime area beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea in which the coastal state exercises sovereign rights for the purposes of exploring and exploiting, conserving and managing the natural resources, whether living or non-living, the seabed and its subsoil and the superjacent waters. Its breadth is 200 nautical miles from the straight baselines from which the territorial sea is measured (UNCLOS, Arts. 55, 56 and 57). Data source: Juan Luis Suárez de Vivero, Atlas of the European Seas and Oceans
Frontex operations
Frontex has, in the past few years, carried out several sea operations at the maritime borders of the EU. The blue shapes indicate the approximate extend of these operations. Data source: Migreurop Altas.
Mobile phone coverage
Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network coverage. Data source: Collins Mobile Coverage.
Oil and gas platforms
Oil and gas platforms in the Mediterranean. Data source:
Search and Rescue Zone
An area of defined dimensions within which a given state is has the responsibility to co-ordinate Search and Rescue operations, i.e. the search for, and provision of aid to, persons, ships or other craft which are, or are feared to be, in distress or imminent danger. Data source: IMO availability of search and rescue (SAR) services - SAR.8/Circ.3, 17 June 2011.
Territorial Waters
A belt of sea (usually extending up to 12 nautical miles) upon which the sovereignty of a coastal State extends (UNCLOS, Art. 2). Data source: Juan Luis Suárez de Vivero, Atlas of the European Seas and Oceans