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.