Another 5,800 migrants desperate to reach Europe were rescued this weekend as they tried to cross the Mediterranean on rickety boats, more than 2,150 of them on Sunday, the Italian coastguard said.
The hottest commodity in the saga of migrants risking death to reach European shores: decrepit wooden fishing boats. And Italy is asking the United States to supply drones that can identify them before they're packed with refugees and sent across the Mediterranean.
The hottest commodity in the saga of migrants risking death to reach European shores: decrepit wooden fishing boats. And Italy is asking the United States to supply drones that can identify them before they're packed with refugees and sent across the Mediterranean.
The just-published 2015-2016 Cruise Industry News Annual Report declared MSC Cruises the number one cruise line in Europe, including in the Mediterranean. The Report, which is one of the most reputable sources of information for the industry, stated that MSC Cruises conquered the leading rank in the industry thanks to a deployed capacity across the Continent of about 1.1 million passengers.
The just-published 2015-2016 Cruise Industry News Annual Report declared MSC Cruises the number one cruise line in Europe, including in the Mediterranean. The Report, which is one of the most reputable sources of information for the industry, stated that MSC Cruises conquered the leading rank in the industry thanks to a deployed capacity across the Continent of about 1.1 million passengers.
EU member states approved on Monday plans for military action against people smugglers in the Mediterranean, seizing and if necessary destroying boats to break up the networks operating out of Libya.
Many marine megafauna taxa are tied to the sea surface for breathing which makes them vulnerable to vessel collisions. Sea turtles have developed efficient mechanisms to reduce surface time for breathing to a few seconds, but they can extend their surface periods to rest or to rewarm after diving into deep and colder waters. However, knowledge of collision occurrences is limited to data of turtles stranded along the coastline worldwide, whereas events occurring offshore go likely underestimated due to the sinking of carcasses. Here we performed a spatially explicit assessment to identify, for the first time, oceanic areas of higher exposure for sea turtles from maritime traffic in the Tyrrhenian Sea, Western Mediterranean. Satellite-tracking data were used to estimate utilization distributions of loggerhead turtles using Brownian bridge kernel density estimation. Maritime traffic density maps based on Automatic Identification System (AIS) data were extracted from open-access data layers, provided by the European Maritime Safety Agency, summarized, and used for the exposure analysis. Turtle occurrences were also investigated in response to vessel densities and seasonal patterns by fitting a generalized additive model to the data. Our results demonstrated that loggerhead turtles are potentially exposed to maritime traffic across the entire basin, especially in the easternmost part. The exposure varies among spring/summer and autumn/winter months. Highest turtle occurrences were found in regions primarily subjected to cargo, tanker, and passenger transportation. This study represents the first-ever effort to characterize the exposure of oceanic loggerhead turtles to maritime traffic and highlights oceanic areas of higher exposure where research and conservation efforts should be directed to understand the effective impact of this stressor on the species.
The OEF Foundation has released a new report which examines how the response to the Somali piracy crisis could make crossing the Mediterranean safer for refugees.
On August 17, while conducting search and rescue operations off the Libyan coast, the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières(MSF) rescue vessel the Bourbon Argos was approached and attacked by a group of armed men onboard an unidentified speedboat, MSF said today, strongly condemning the attack.
A boat carrying up to 450 migrants capsized in the Mediterranean off Egypt's north coast on Wednesday, drowning 42 people and prompting a search operation that rescued 163 passengers, officials said.
The United States on Monday offered its backing for a NATO naval operation off Libya in support of a controversial Italian plan to close the Western Mediterranean migrant route to Europe.
Egyptian security officials say a boat carrying mostly Sudanese and Syrian migrants has capsized off Egypt's Mediterranean coast, killing three people.
Three Italian ships rescued 414 migrants from four boats in the Mediterranean sea on Tuesday, Italy's coast guard said, with four newborns and one young child among those saved.
Cyprus said rescuers on Sunday saved more than 100 refugees fleeing the war in Syria after their boat ran into trouble overnight off the Mediterranean island.
Tripoli - Libya's coastguard said it rescued more than 100 migrants on Monday after the engine on their rubber dinghy broke down as they tried to reach Europe across the Mediterranean.
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