04/02: 64 travellers in distress in Atlantic Ocean, fate unknown

05.02.2024 / 11:06 / Atlantic Ocean

Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 04 of February 2024
Case name: 2024_02_04-ATL002
Situation: Boat with 64 travellers that had left from Nouakchott, Mauretania, fate unknown.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Atlantic Ocean

Summary of the Case: On the 4th of February 2024, a relative informed the Alarm Phone shift team about a boat that had left from Nouakchott, Mauretania, in the morning of the 26th of January. The relative had not heard anything from the 64 travellers, including 5 women, since then and also the shift team could not establish direct contact to the people. However, the shift team informed the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo about the boat and passed on all the information from the relative. Throughout the next hours, the shift team tried to find out more about the missing travellers, calling Salvamento Maritimo and the Guardia Civil Canarias, without being able to match the boat to any of the numerous arrivals that had taken place during that time. To date, the Alarm Phone has still no information about the boat's whereabouts and hopes that it is among all those who managed to travel to the Canaries in recent week.

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