Sea-Watch Completes Migrant Mission

Sea-Watch Mediterranean Migrant rescue operations are now complete for the year.

U.K-based charity Human Rights at Sea has followed and supported the Sea-Watch team since the start of their journey from Hamburg in May 2015.

Last week the operational phase of the Sea-Watch project in Lampedusa officially ended.

The Sea-Watch ship found shelter in the port of Djerba, Tunisia, for the winter. The organization will be back to patrol the Sicilian Channel next Spring, with a new boat, better equipped for SAR operations.

The Sea-Watch team celebrated the end of the season with members of the Coast Guard, specifically with the crew of the patrol boat CP 320, which this summer rescued around 2000 migrants, the same as the Sea-Watch.

The considerable difference in the capacity of the Sea-Watch ship and the Coast Guard’s patrol boats, worth $3.5 million each, did not prevent the former from achieving a great result during the summer, in what is certainly not a competition but rather an efficient collaboration that the organization wishes to keep for next year.

Human Rights at Sea Intern, Giorgia Linardi, was a member of the Sea-Watch crew and Sea-Watch legal advisor having taken over from Daniel Shepherd.