Italian Navy Recover Bodies One Year After in Search and Rescue Operation

Maritime operations and Accidents are as intertwined as the veins and arteries of the human organism. Like inseparable twins, efforts at safety and security at work, be it off shore or ashore, continues to draw huge cost from the lean purse of local operators. International maritime investors spare very little; at most time nothing  when accidents occur.

In the African continent, maritime accidents are more likely not to be reported owing to ineffective communication channels, lack of equipment and a crippling disconnect between local coastal dwellers and government Agencies.

Data/statistics thus remain a major cause of economic under development and stagnated maritime growth in many developing countries.

Even as Safety efforts continue, reports indicate that the Italian Navy has raised a migrant vessel that sank off Sicily in April 2015 leading to the death of 800 persons while 28 survived.

The boat reportedly capsized 193 kilometers south of the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, about 85 miles northeast of Libya, when its occupants, probably out of fear of arrest/deportation, moved to one side as a merchant ship approached.

The Italian Navy found the wreck of the 25-meter (82-foot) vessel a month after it sank and has already recovered over 100 bodies, but hundreds more, including many women and children, are believed to be locked below the vessel’s deck.

Using a complicated pulley system and robotic arms to ensure that none of the bodies were lost, the Navy lifted the vessel from a depth of 370 meters (1,214 feet). It is now being taken to Sicily in refrigerated transport 30-metre-long so that scientists can try to identify the victims. Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has indicated that the nation will attempt to identify and then bury all the bodies found.

Not less than  2,500 people have died this year in attempts to cross the Mediterranean