On Board Rescue Vessel Aquarius

In September of 2017, I was fortunate enough to take a leave of absence from NASA and go work for Doctors Without Borders on board their search and rescue ship in the Mediterranean.  Lots of family, friends, and colleagues have been interested in the work we did aboard the ship and I figured this was a good outlet to communicate that experience.

(If you want to skip all the reading and go straight to the videos, scroll down to the links below.)

Médecins Sans Frontières
For those who aren't familiar, Doctors Without Borders is a non-governmental (NGO) international aid organization of French origin best known for its humanitarian work in conflict zones around the globe as well as facilitating needs in places where governments have failed to provide the most basic care due to corruption, poverty, lack of infrastructure, etc.  It is recognized throughout the world by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières, which is usually just abbreviated as MSF. 

Even though MSF is primarily known as a medical organization, medical staff only make up for about half of their work force.  The other half is comprised of admins, project coordinators, and logisticians all whom are paid professionals.  Since my medical background consists of poorly playing the game Operation as a ten year old and being forced to watch a few episodes of Grey's Anatomy with an ex-girlfriend, I was better suited for the non-medical side of things and joined the organization as a logistician.

MSF likes hiring engineers as logisticians because they are responsible for setting up and maintaining infrastructure in the projects which can include housing/medical facilities, water/sanitation systems, security, transportation, communication, supply chain, etc.  Someone with a technical background that can do a bit of everything with limited resources.  

M.V. Aquarius
On the ship, my position was called Log Afloat and included a few more duties specific to our context such as crowd control and food distribution.  I joined the ship in September 2017, originally for a three month contract, and ended up extending until March 2018. 

Our vessel, the Aquarius, was a 230 ft long survey vessel built in 1977 that was re-purposed in 2016 as a search and rescue vessel specifically for this project.

M.V. Aquarius

The crew on board consisted of three separate teams:  MSF, SOS Méditerranée, and Marine Crew. 

Our MSF team consisted of ten staff including four medics (1 doctor, 2 nurses, 1 midwife), the logistician, two cultural mediators, one humanitarian affairs officer, a communications officer, and our project coordinator.  We were responsible for the rescued people's well-being once they were on board the ship. 

The team that actually performed the rescues was SOS Méditerranée.  They are a recently formed NGO (July of 2015) that came into being to specifically address this crisis in the Mediterranean.  They are made up of seamen and seawomen with experience in maritime search and rescue operations. 

The marine crew are the amazingly skilled professional seafarers that run and maintain the ship, from the officers on the bridge to the engineers and able seaman who work 24/7 on deck and below to keep the ship straight and true.

In total we were about 35 persons and although the lines above clearly define the role of each team, we all worked together on a daily basis and became a very tight knit family during our time at sea.

The Team:  MSF, SOS, & Marine Crew

Search and Rescue Zone
Our mission was to patrol the Mediterranean waters 15 - 50 miles north of the Libyan coast searching for migrant vessels fleeing this country.  As we were not the only search and rescue asset in the area, we worked in close coordination with the appropriate Maritime Rescue Coordination Center to bring the rescued people to a port of safety, which was usually an Italian port in Sicily.  The other rescue vessels patrolling these waters included Coast Guard and Naval vessels from varying countries and other NGO vessels like ours.    

SAR Zone

The Context
There are countless publications dealing with this context so my description will definitely not be all inclusive but here is the short version.  People are trying to flee Libya for a multitude of reasons and each person we rescued had their own individual, usually horrific, story.  The majority are sub-Saharan Africans fleeing their own homeland due to extreme poverty or the ongoing threat of war, violence, and rape.  They are unaware of the hardships ahead and just hear of Libya as a place to work or transit to Europe.  The journey itself to Libya is wrought with danger including enslavement, extortion, and torture which some don't survive.  Those who make it to Libya are usually caught and placed into "detention centers" where they are supposedly being held until they can be extradited back home.  However, with the lack of government infrastructure and warring militias in the country, these centers are no more than squalid holding pens that provide militias and government officials alike with money through systematic selling and extortion of peoples.  The atrocities we hear happening in these centers are at best inhumane and most of the time barbaric.  With no way to return home, most captives look to the sea as their only means of escape.  This also includes foreign laborers who have been living/working in Libya for years from as far away as Bangladesh.  Even local Libyans see no alternatives except by sea to seek medical treatment they can't receive in their own home country.

It usually takes some type of payment to a smuggler to make it on a boat.  The more you can pay, the better boat you can get but no matter what, none of these boats are seaworthy enough to make it across the Mediterranean to Europe.  The most common is a large poorly built rubber boat that can have more than 150 people crammed to standing room only.  Others may be smaller fiberglass boats or larger multi-level wooden boats than can exceed 500 people.  

Collapsing migrant boat during rescue

The Politics
The situation is highly dynamic and changed drastically over the short time I was there and has changed drastically again in the few months I have been home.  In general, the anti-immigration wave is stretching across Europe.  The Italian government along with the European Union has been funding and training the Libyan "Coast Guard" to perform more rescues and return people to Libya.  This is abhorrent on so many levels but primarily because per international law, boats rescued at sea are to be taken to the nearest port of safety and Libya is in no way a port of safety.  

In March of 2018, Italians voted into power a far-right nationalist government that is currently not allowing any more peoples rescued at sea to be brought to their shores in an attempt to play politics while hundreds of people lives are still at stake.  As the saga continues for rescue vessels to be given a port of safety, countless men, women, and children continue to die needlessly in the Mediterranean Sea.

Video and Article Links
As we always had multiple journalists on board, their videos, photos, audio recordings, and written articles can show and explain much more than I can come close to writing here.  Below are just two reports from journalist that produced pieces from my time on board.

This is a great four part video series done by a German journalist team that captures the beginning-to-end of our operations including a critical rescue.  Each video is about 10 minutes long:

Part 1 - Training

Part 2 - Transfer

Part 3: - Rescues

Part 4: - Stories

This is a well done article written by an American/Italian journalist that chronicles just a few of the harrowing experiences faced by those rescued:

Migrants Rescued at Sea Between Death and Hope

What You Can Do

Both MSF and SOS are non-profit organizations that rely strictly on donations so both need support from patrons especially SOS as they are still gaining a foothold in the NGO world.

You can follow these specific campaigns or learn more about them at:

MSF_Sea on Twitter and  SOS MEDITERRANEE on Facebook

There is also a logbook online that is constantly updated from the Aquarius and gives real time insight on their current situation in the Mediterranean:
Onboard-Aquarius

For those that can't make it on a rescue ship in the Med (include slight smirk here), you can make a difference right where you live.  I can almost guarantee, no matter where you live, there are immigrants who can use your help settling in, being welcomed, and becoming acquainted with the vastly different universe they have been placed in.  
Amaanah Refugee Services is a great place to start if you live in the Houston area.

Finally, the most important thing you can do is educate yourself on what is happening in the world and understand how your vote not only impacts those directly around you but also drastically affects people thousands of miles away.  You can vote for policy makers who welcome refugees no matter their nationality or religion and don't vilify or belittle their desperate pleas for help.  You can vote for politicians who don't empower nationalists and give their racism and hatred a valid platform to speak.  You can speak by your vote and help those who have no voice.   

If you have any comments or questions, you are  more than welcome to get in touch with me so we can chat.

Hope everyone is well.
Cheers,
Jay B