Lack of coordination and Libyan interceptions impede search and rescue at sea

The lack of coordination with member states and the Libyan coastguard’s presence in international waters create a ‘hostile’ environment for search and rescue (SAR) activities in the area, EURACTIV has learned from the Ocean Viking crew during a mission in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Ocean Viking is a boat rented by the NGO SOS Mediterranée, which operates in international waters to rescue migrants attempting to cross to Europe by sea. Such boats are frequently intercepted and illegally returned to Libya, where they experience a wide range of documented abuses in a consolidated network of human trafficking.

By request of SOS Mediterranée, Ocean Viking crew members will only be identified by their first name for privacy reasons.

“Since 2018, we have experienced a lack of coordination from the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centres (MRCC),” Claire, the communication coordinator onboard the Ocean Viking, told EURACTIV, referring to the coordination centre in member states sharing the Mediterranean Sea, such as Italy, Malta and Greece.

The lack of coordination is combined with the presence of the Libyan coastguard, which often intercepts migrants at sea to take them back to the North African state, where they are usually detained and freed only if families pay a ransom.

The patrols of the Libyan coastguard are usually faster than the NGO boats. The Ocean Viking can go up to 10 knots per hour (roughly 18 kilometres per hour), while the Libyan vessels can reach speeds of 20 to 30 knots. Libyan coastguard vessels frequently manage to arrive at distress scenes before the NGOs.

Some of the boats have been recently donated by the EU, which provides “assistance” to the coastguard.

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“I am not always successful in [the search], because of many factors,” Luisa, the SAR coordinator, told EURACTIV.

It can be, for instance, that the “coordinates of the boat in distress we receive are wrong, or the Libyan coastguard already intercepted them,” she said.

Operations

From the Italian port of Bari, where previous survivors were disembarked, the Ocean Viking took more than four days to reach the so-called “target area”, which is a wide space in international waters overlooking Libya and Tunisia, where the probability of finding a boat in distress is highest.

After reaching the zone, the crew starts its ‘lookout activity’ where all the team onboard take shifts of 45 minutes on the boat bridge, to look at the horizon.

“We use binoculars from the sunrise to the sunset to look for potential boating stress,” Claire told EURACTIV.

The search

“My main task is the coordination of the search for boats in distress. For example, when we receive a distress call from Alarm Phone [an NGO which provides a hotline for boat people in distress], we receive some coordinates, and sometimes they are the only data we can work on,” the SAR coordinator of the mission told EURACTIV.

Alarm Phone is reached by people onboard a vessel in distress at sea via a satellite phone. The organisation collects the coordinates of the position given by persons onboard, together with the description of the vessels, the number of people onboard and their conditions.

However, due to a wide range of factors, such as language, the possible panic of people on an overcrowded boat, and the sun that can make the reading of the screen – where the coordinates are – harder, sometimes the data are wrong.

“I have to take into consideration the position of the last coordinate, what is the current potential speed of the boat and to know what is the type and size of the vessel,” said Luisa.

Encountering the Libyans

Luisa told EURACTIV that she has worked on the ship for four years, and only a few times seen the Libyan coastguard “behaving like a proper coastguard”.

Luisa described their behaviour as “aggressive” not only towards the Ocean Viking but also towards people intercepted at sea.

“A couple of months ago, we had a very violent encounter with them without any communication, they started to shoot close to our ship, even when I was asking many times, via radio communication, what their intentions were,” the SAR coordinator told EURACTIV.

“First they shoot and then they answered the radio. This is not behaviour that belongs to the coastguard. This behaviour belongs to criminals,” she said.

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The European Commission will listen to the version of Libyan partners about the incident that occurred with the NGO SOS Mediterranee boat Ocean Viking on Saturday (25 March), Commission spokesperson Peter Stano told the press on Monday.

The rescue

During a rescue, timing is essential, different members of the crew told EURACTIV.

Any delay – even those of a few seconds – can result in a large number of lives lost at sea. Most of the travellers do not know how to swim.

The vessels used by migrants are typically rubber, wood, big fishing vessels, or iron boats, which are very precarious and can sink at any moment. Common risks include people suddenly moving on one side, destabilising the boat, shoal water not detected because such vessels do not have any depth sounder, high waves or even, in the case of a rubber boat, a fingernail accidentally piercing the raft.

The boats typically carry between 40 and 500 people.

The crew is available 24 hours and while waiting for a distress call – which could take many days – the SAR team performs a wide range of training in which they simulate different emergency cases, to work out the operations that have to be undertaken.

“My task is to train everybody and bring all the crew at the same level of preparation, being able to speak the same language and then start doing drills at sea,” Alessandro, the SAR team leader told EURACTIV.

“Once we have a target, we have to find a strategy to approach it in an appropriate way, according to our standard procedures,” he added.

In most of the cases, rescues are conducted with three speedboats and they apply different procedures according to the target and the situation they find, which can drastically change at any moment. The crew proceed with one strategy and could need to re-assess the whole work according to the change of the situation, which can be, for instance, a sudden shipwreck.

During a rescue, the SAR team aims to create “a trustful environment where the survivors can trust us. They do not know who you are, if you are pirates, or the Libyan coastguard, or anything else,” explained Alessandro.

“So first we have to ensure they listen to us and somehow obey because in these moments there is a lot of panic and tension that we have to de-escalate,” the SAR team leader said.

After creating communication and trust, the team gives them life jackets and they start “extracting people from a dangerous environment” to bring them “into a safe environment, which is our boat,” the SAR team leader concluded.

[Edited by Benjamin Fox/Nathalie Weatherald]