Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 13th April 2020
Case name: 2020_04_13-WM461
Situation: 9 travellers rescued by fishermen and brought back to Morocco.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: In the early morning of Monday the 13th of April, the Alarm Phone was alerted to a boat in distress carrying 9 travellers. We were informed that it was a rubber boat with no engine, and it had departed from Tanger during the night. We were unable to establish direct contact with the travellers until 12:35h CEST, however connection was very bad so it was hard to understand each other. At 12:56h we received their GPS position and a few minutes later the travellers told us that water was entering the boat and they were in urgent need of help. At 13:27h we alerted the Spanish coastguard about this case, passing on all the information we had. We were then no longer able to establish contact with the travellers. One hour later we spoke to the Moroccan coastguard that confirmed that they were aware of the case, as the boat was in Moroccan waters. At 16:18h the Moroccan coastguard told our shift team that a military vessel had left the port, however they were unable to give us an Estimated Time of Arrival. At 18:53h the Moroccan coastguard told us that they had just heard that the boat had been rescued “by another unit” at 8h CEST in the morning, and the 9 travellers had been taken to the police station in Tanger. We suspected that this might not be our boat as we had last spoken to the travelers at 13:30h and they were still at sea. We finally managed to speak directly to the travellers at 00:27h, they were really exhausted but informed us that they had been rescued by a fishing boat that had brought them back to Morocco, they were all safe.