Luisa Albera — Saving lives in the Mediterranean

Luisa Albera peers through the binoculars into the vastness of the blue Mediterranean Sea. From the deck of the Ocean Viking rescue ship, she pans the horizon in the hopes of spotting people fleeing the coast of Libya.

Having left the port of Marseille only days earlier, the plan was to patrol the international waters north of Al Khums towards the Tunisian border. But before heading out to the open seas, the ship passes the west side of Corsica and then towards the northeast of Sardinia where it will drop anchor so that the team can train. 

The hope is to rescue as many people as possible, while providing medical care and assistance onboard the Ocean Viking, a 70-metre former platform supply vessel from Norway.

Some 1,000 life jackets are stored in a container at the bow of the ship, ready at a moment's notice. Three semi-rigid lifeboats with twin outboard engines are also hoisted to the side.

It's the summer of 2021 and Albera, up until then, had been with the red-hulled ship for more than two years. At the time, she was SOS Mediterranee's rescue coordinator, a position that has helped save the lives of thousands. 

She didn't know it yet, but within a matter of days, the Ocean Viking would carry out its largest rescue in history and bring back some 572 people. A five-hour 30-minute-long operation during the night of 3 to 4 July some 80 nautical miles off the Libyan coast would alone save 369 people, almost half of them children.

Her job comes with its own particular hazards — given the wider Italian state-led crackdown on charity rescue operations.

In 2018, the then Italian minister of interior, Matteo Salvini, closed Italian ports to the 629 migrants aboard the MS Aquarius, another ship operated by SOS Mediterranée.

Today, such rescue ships face even more obstacles after the Italian government, in early 2023, passed a decree that requires them to immediately sail to distant ports to disembark after a rescue.

By the time the Ocean Viking had left the port of Marseille in the summer of 2021, the Geo Barents, a ship operated by Doctors Without Borders, had also been detained by the Italian government. 

"The major frustration is that there is a lack of coordination, because I am not aware of all the cases in distress," said Albera in an interview onboard the Ocean Viking on 30 June, 2021.

Drones operated by the EU's border agency Frontex and Malta don't share information with civilian-led rescue operations, she said. "I know only what I can see, or if Alarm Phone is sending me an email, because someone called them," she said.

The following day, she coordinated a rescue of 44 people from two wooden boats in distress, in two separate operations, in Malta's search and rescue zone. The next day the Ocean Viking witnesses the Libyans intercept a boat around 10 nautical miles inside Malta's search-and-rescue zone.

For reasons not immediately clear, the Libyans then let those on the boat go. But the chase had caught Albera by surprise. "This is the first time that I am not in the Libyan search-and-rescue region and they come for an interception," she says.

Among those rescued and eventually brought on deck were two small frail boys, including one in a wheelchair. Albera had sent a port of safety request to the Maltese in the hopes of disembarking those rescued.

"No reply till now. I don't expect any answer from Malta," she says. [Malta never replied]. 

The next morning, she steers the Ocean Viking into the Libyan search and rescue zone somewhere north of  Zuwara, a coastal city. Two reconnaissance planes operated by the French Association Pilotes Volontaires, an NGO, are flying in the area west of Tripoli. 

Three successive rescues bring an additional 159 people onboard.  But the largest and most difficult rescue was still about to take place. The ship’s bridge had only five hours earlier been alerted of numerous people on a boat somewhere in the Libyan rescue region.

A wooden boat had been spotted by one of the reconnaissance planes, some 80 nautical miles north of Zuwara. "We have a visual, it is only a blinking light. It is less than one mile away," said one of the rescue team leaders. "It is night time, we can't see shit. I don't want to hear any sound, I want everybody to be focused," he added.

The two rescue speed boats are lowered into the water, with the bridge giving an estimated bearing of five degrees starboard side at a distance of three cables. It's in the middle of the night, and the dim flicker of platforms flaring near the Miskar gas fields can be seen in the far distance.

Almost 25,000 people, and likely many more unaccounted for, have died crossing the central Mediterranean since 2014 

In the darkness, they find the boat floating without a working engine. The freeboard and transom are precariously low, a sign of how overcrowded it is. The situation is critical. 

The speed boats approach with caution, pass out of life jackets and unload 25 people each at a time onto the Ocean Viking. 

Some 369 people were rescued. The last person, a middle-aged mechanic from Egypt with a long scar running up his forearm, was the last to step off at 3.30 in the morning.

With 572 people on deck and the weather and ensuing three-metre swells making a turn for the worst,  Albera steers the ship towards Italy in the hopes of a speedy disembarkation.

But delays and uncertainty heighten tensions on deck with food rations on the verge of depletion.  Fights break out as a prison-like separation of nationalities and zones begins to take place. The Libyans use cigarettes as barter for protection. A young man from Tunisia jumps into the sea only to be rescued again.

“The last food distribution is made on Friday. For this number of people, only a military ship can come and refurbish us," says Albera. 

She keeps her cool and continues to press the Italians for a port. She had sent one on Monday and another three requests on Wednesday with Malta in copy. When finally a port was given on Thursday, an explosion of joy erupted on deck. The first person to disembark was a 16-year-old from Eritrea. 

Albera says the individual stories of each person rescued are etched in their eyes even if they don't speak. People are willing to die to reach Europe, and some prefer to die rather than turn back, she says.

"This is a common phrase you will hear," she says. It is also one of a desperate hope fraught with potentially deadly consequences. Almost 25,000 people, and likely many more unaccounted for, have died crossing the central Mediterranean since 2014. 

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