Lesvos, 12.12.15 “Today we started at 8:15. After only a few minutes we spotted a heavily overcrowded boat glowing orange from all the life vests aboard. The ten meter long boat carried 60 people including children, women and elderly. The boat was heading towards a steep coast. We then rerouted it to the port of…

A week after the agreement between the EU and Turkey, the migrant flow towards Greece has considerably decreased, yet it is far from stopping. In Lesvos, the arrivals shifted from the Northern coast to the Eastern and Southern part of the island. Only a few boats have been reported approaching the beach of Skala Sykamineas…

According to the UNHCR, up to now nearly 430,000 migrants arrived in Lesvos in 2015. During the sole month of November, 65% of the total arrivals in Greece have been concentrated in Lesvos. This counts 83,000 persons, with an average daily arrival of 3000 migrants. The top nationalities include Syrians, forming almost half of the…

After two weeks of operations on the island of Lesvos, Sea-Watch has assisted numerous rubber boats ensuring the safety of their passengers on their way to the shores of Lesvos. The crew has been operating in the Northern coastline of Lesvos, where most arrivals have been concentrated so far. In the latest days, the number…

Photo: Head of Mission Henning Toben, trained SAR expert from MRCC Bremen. On November 16th the first operation of Sea-Watch in the Aegean Sea took place, with a successful outcome. The German organisation have been actively involved in two rescues, in collaboration with the Coast Guard of Mithimna, Lesvos. Rescue 1: the SW crew reported…

After touch-basing the situation during the summer, Sea-Watch personnel settled on the island since the end of October to start liaising with authorities, local and international organization present on site and other relevant stakeholders. Last week the main operational tool of the mission reach the island. It is a SAR-equipped, 7 meters long tender. The…

“He told me, he would never enter a boat again. Especially not one of these crappy, overcrowded, instable rubber rafts, in which he had to cross the Mediterranean Sea. Yet he did. To join Sea-Watch, protesting to stop the dying, facilitate safe passage and end the war on refugees in the Med.” These are the…

On October 13 at midday the Sea-Watch Team gathered in Berlin on the shore of the Spree, the river crossing the city, right in front of the German Bundestag. That is the building where all relevant political decisions are taken, as the ones that recently have been remodeling the German policy with regards to immigration….

Sea-Watch is already working to prepare a new mission for the winter period, which consists in providing assistance in the context of migrants crossings between Turkey and Greece. The operational base would be, this time, the Greek island of Lesbos, which has been subject to a particularly high pressure in the latest weeks. Two members…

The whole SW Team is now reuniting in Berlin for a big demonstration taking place on October 13. During the event one of the rubber boats rescued by SW, which has been brought to Germany as evidence, will be placed in front of the Parliament and boarded first by politicians from the German Parliament, then…

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 emptied the land base…

October 3 is an infamous date for Lampedusa. Every year since 2013 the island commemorates the death of 368 migrants right in front of its shore, only 2 miles away. Picture: The Telegraph. The events of that night will always remain blurred. The bodies of the victims collected that night and during the next days…