Every year thousands of people lose their lives at sea while trying to cross the Mediterranean. The majority of them are migrants and asylum seekers setting off the Libyan and Tunisian coasts towards Italy, most of the times riding rubber or wooden boats which are absolutely inapt for the open sea.
In many cases, their only hope is to be rescued by one of the several NGO vessels that are patrolling the Search and Rescue (SAR) zones in which the Mediterranean Sea has been divided since 1979.
In April 2023, I was invited on board the Life Support, the ship belonging to the Italian NGO EMERGENCY, to document its fifth Search and Rescue Mission. During the mission, the Life Support team rescued 55 migrants off the coast of Libya, including 3 women and 3 children, who were riding on a rubber boat with a broken engine.
The rescuees were then visited and treated on board by EMERGENCY’s medical staff and escorted to the harbor of Marina di Carrara (Tuscany), following the directions of the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center.
This series of photographs is a visual account of the mission.