In the early afternoon of October 28, the Spanish vessel Open Arms was approaching the port of Palermo for a scheduled crew-rotation. It was just returning from a rescue mission in the Mediterranean, saving 44 people fleeing Libya on a wooden dinghy in distress.
A pause was going to be needed, everyone thought on board, when the call arrived of a distress case almost 200 nautical miles away. It had been launched by Moonbird, the two-seater plane of the German NGO Sea Watch. Overnight it had spotted a small rubber dinghy, carrying fifteen people including several children, roughly 40 miles from the Libyan coast in international waters.
In 2019, nearly 60 000 people have attempted to arrive to Europe via sea, with more than 1000 people dying in shipwrecks. Moonbird had already launched a distress call to the offshore oil platforms VOS Aphrodite, that at the time was sailing very close to the migrant boat. No answer was received: a common behavior of merchant vessels who see saving lives as a ‘waste of time’ or a chance to face later problems with the authorities.
