10/05: 56 travellers in distress, returned to Morocco

11.05.2024 / 13:04 / Atlantic Ocean

Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 10th of May 2024
Case name: 2024_05_10-ATL007
Situation: Group of travellers in distress in the Atlantic Ocean were returned by the Moroccan navy.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Atlantic Ocean

Summary of the Case: On the 10th of May, a relative alerted the Alarm Phone shift team to a boat in distress in the Atlantic Ocean. It concerned a boat that carried 56 travellers, among them nine women, seven minors and one baby. They had left from a beach between Tan Tan and Guelmim, Morocco, in the morning hours of the same day. The shift team alerted Spanish authorities, including the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo, relaying all the information to them. Throughout the next hours, the shift teams tried to reach the travellers and eventually managed to get a new position and heard that the engine was not working anymore, the situation getting worse and worse. The shift team alerted MRCC Morocco, and after several hours of uncertainty about the authorities' efforts, Alarm Phone learned that the boat had been picked up by the Moroccan navy.

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