Themes

Search and rescue at sea

Automatic translation.

Since 2014 some non-governmental organisations have sent ships, sailing boats and aircraft to sea to search for and rescue people crossing the Mediterranean on unsafe boats. This page collects who they are, with what means and in which years, and the data on the dead and missing along the sea routes. We report facts with their source, not judgements on migration policies.

Dead and missing by route

Source: IOM’s Missing Migrants Project (CC BY 4.0), totals by route and year calculated by Atlas of Aid. Minimum estimate. The current year is partial. missingmigrants.iom.int

Organisations with ships

Support without ships

Timeline of vessels and aircraft

From the first to the last year at sea (not always continuous). Still active in colour: ships in blue, aircraft in orange; no longer in service in grey.

The source for each vessel or aircraft is in the list below; where a primary source is missing, Wikipedia is given.

Who rescues

Sea rescue falls first of all to States, through coast guards and rescue coordination centres. NGO ships operate mainly in the central Mediterranean, between Libya and Tunisia on one side and Italy and Malta on the other. According to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, from 2017 to mid-2025 there were 86 judicial or administrative proceedings against NGO ships or crews, and since January 2023 several ships have been subject to administrative detention in Italy (FRA, June 2025 update).

Many ships have passed from one organisation to another: the Sea-Watch 4 became SOS Humanity's Humanity 1, the Sea-Eye 4 became Mediterranea, and Sea-Eye's Alan Kurdi became ResQ People. In the timeline each ship appears with the organisation that operated it in those years.

Some organisations have no ships but support rescues: reconnaissance aircraft that spot boats in distress, a telephone line that collects calls from people at sea and passes them to the authorities, and networks that finance the ships of other organisations.

Other sea routes

English Channel. Rescues are coordinated by the British coastguard and, on the French side, by the Gris-Nez centre; lifeboats of the RNLI, a British charity, and of the SNSM, a French volunteer association, also operate at sea. NGOs have no ships here: they work on the coast and with reports. The British government publishes daily the number of people arriving on small boats (GOV.UK).

Atlantic, towards the Canaries. Rescues are entrusted mainly to Salvamento Marítimo, the Spanish public agency. NGOs have few means of their own: for example Mission Lifeline's Marwa, a 15-metre yacht used for search missions, and Sea-Watch's aircraft Seabird 3, also planned for this route.

Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea. This is the route of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar and Bangladesh. Of the organisations on this page, only MOAS has worked here, with the Phoenix, after leaving the Mediterranean in 2017, mainly to deliver aid; the data on arrivals and movements come from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Caribbean. Crossings towards the United States and Puerto Rico are monitored and rescued by the United States Coast Guard.

Sources and method

• Ships and organisations: list compiled by hand, ship by ship, from the FRA update, organisations' websites and reports, the German government's answers to the Bundestag, and the press; where a primary source is missing we say so. The years indicate the first and last year of activity at sea, not continuity: many ships were idle for months.
• Accounts: from each organisation's profile in the atlas (public registers, the European Union Transparency Register, or annual report). Organisations with income below about half a million euros, or without a verifiable budget, appear here without a profile.
• Dead and missing: IOM's Missing Migrants Project (CC BY 4.0), summed by us per route and year. These are a minimum estimate: many shipwrecks are never recorded. The "Continental Europe – United Kingdom" route also includes deaths on land, in lorries and in ports; for this reason we report drownings separately.