Southern Mediterranean News

As risks of cargo diversion to the detriment of EU ports are becoming more and more real with the upcoming entry into force at the beginning of 2024 of EU ETS for shipping, local organizations are voicing their concerns.The Federation of European Port Companies and Private Terminals (FEPORT), European Tugowners’ Association (ETA), European Maritime Pilots’ Association (EMPA) and European Community Association of Ship Brokers and Agents (ECASBA) members are expressing major concerns regarding the lack of real assessment of the EU ETS for shipping related effects on EU ports.

Rescue ship Aquarius, which has picked up almost 3,000 migrants from the Mediterranean this year, will carry out rescue missions without waiting for orders from coastguards and will not return people to Libya, its search and rescue head said."When we see there is a vessel in distress, with a high likelihood of people dying, we will go and rescue them immediately as per international maritime law," Nick Romaniuk told Reuters on board the Aquarius.Over the last year coordination centres asking rescue vessels to go on standby or wait for clarification on certain things had added to the danger of people needing to be rescued, which is why they would no longer wait…

Italian coastguards seized a migrant rescue boat operated by a German aid group in the Mediterranean due to suspicions it had aided illegal immigration, the police said on Wednesday. Video showed the "Iuventa", which is run by Jugend Rettet, arriving at the island of Lampedusa surrounded by several coastguard vessels after it was stopped at sea before dawn. The Jugend Rettet group said on Twitter its crew was being interviewed by officials, but had received no information about an investigation into its activities. "Our crew was guaranteed this is a standard process," said the group, which is one of around eight humanitarian organisations whose operations Italy is trying to regulate. It did not give any immediate comment on the police probe.

Italy to send two boats to help Libya coastguard; plans for larger operation thwarted by Libya. Italy's parliament authorised on Wednesday a limited naval mission to help Libya's coastguard curb migrant flows, which have become a source of growing political friction ahead of national elections expected early next year. An Italian official said Rome planned to send two boats to Libyan waters, with Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti saying the vessels would only provide technical support and would not infringe on the north African country's sovereignty. Italy announced the operation last week, saying it had been requested by Libya's U.N.-backed government. It initially hoped to send six ships into Libyan territorial waters, but the plans had to be scaled back following protests from Tripoli.

Hundreds of migrants were rescued from a sinking ship on Friday in a massive operation in the southern Mediterranean off the island of Crete, the Greek coastguard said, but four bodies were also recovered. Greek search and rescue teams were dispatched to the area, about 75 nautical miles off southern Crete in territory which falls under Egypt's jurisdiction. In total, 340 people were rescued by midday, Greek authorities said. There was no immediate information on the nationalities of the migrants or on the victims. Greek media said the wooden boat the migrants were sailing in started taking in water. It was not immediately clear where the boat had sailed from.

Aircraft debris was found in the southern Mediterranean by Greek authorities searching for a missing EgyptAir aircraft which vanished from radar screens early Thursday, Greek state tv reported. Earlier, Greek officials said pieces of plastic were found in the sea some 230 miles south of the island of Crete, and two lifevests which appeared to be from an aircraft. (Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas)

Greece is deploying military aircraft and a frigate to an area in the southern Mediterranean where an EgyptAir aircraft vanished from radar screens early on Thursday, its defence ministry said. The search for the missing EgyptAir plane was taking place at sea, about 130 nautical miles southeast of the island of Karpathos, the Greek defence ministry said. "One C-130 aircraft and an early-warning EMB-145H plane are already operating in the area. Another C-130 plane is on standby at Kasteli airport on the (southern Greek) island of Crete," Greece's military command said. A civil aviation source said the operation was conducted in an area between Greek and Egyptian airspace.

PONANT Yacht Cruises & Expeditions has appointed GAC UK as its agent for all United Kingdom and Ireland port calls in 2016. PONANT’s 142m and 132 cabin megayachts Le Boréal and L’Austral will cruise around the British Isles and Ireland, including the Scilly Isles, Shetlands, Dublin, Liverpool and Scottish Highlands in May and June next year. Fergus Poole, GAC UK’s newly appointed Cruise Manager, said the high prestige business is a boost to GAC’s growing cruise operations in and around the UK and Ireland.

GAC UK is boosting its services for the cruise industry with the appointment of Fergus Poole as Cruise Manager. For nearly two decades, Poole has specialized in the sector and has held a number of managerial and operations posts dedicated to serving cruise and passenger vessels, most recently for services at U.K. and Irish ports. He joined GAC on May 1 and is based in Sunderland, from where he will coordinate cruise calls at ports nationwide. Ports in the U.K. have always been popular as cruise destinations.

A French patrol ship rescued 217 migrants from three small boats that had run into trouble off the coast of Libya on Saturday, the maritime police said in a statement. The Commandant Birot helped several dozen people in distress and intercepted two suspected people smugglers, according to the statement. "The intercepted vessels have all been neutralised," the maritime police said, adding that they were responding to a call from the maritime rescue coordination centre in Rome as part of the European Union's operation Triton. The rescued migrants and the suspected people smugglers have been handed over to the Italian authorities, the Toulon, France-based maritime police added.

An Italian judge on Friday ordered that the presumed captain of a migrant boat that sank with the loss of more than 700 lives should remain in custody after prosecutors asked for him to be charged with multiple homicide and people-trafficking. Mohammed Alì Malek, 27, denies that he was in charge of the heavily overloaded fishing boat that capsized off Libya late on Saturday with hundreds of African and Bangladeshi migrants locked in its lower decks. "He says he's a migrant like all the others and he paid his fare to go on the boat," his lawyer, Massimo Ferrante, said outside the courtroom. However Catania chief prosecutor Giovanni Salvi said the judge had ordered both Malek and 25 year-old Syrian Mahmud Bikhit, who is accused of being a member of the crew, to be detained in custody.

Italian navy and coast guard ships rescued around 1,500 migrants aboard five boats in the southern Mediterranean in less than 24 hours, officials said on Sunday. All of the migrants were rescued on Saturday by two coast guard ships and one navy ship in five separate operations, the coast guard said in a statement. Three of the migrants' boats were in difficulty and sent rescue requests via satellite phones while they were off the coast of Libya. The Italian vessels spotted the other two while heading for the others. The migrants were all transboarded onto the Italian ships and were being taken to either the island of Lampedusa or ports in Sicily, the statement said.

At least 10 North African migrants died when their rubber boat overturned in the southern Mediterranean while almost a thousand more from a total of seven vessels were rescued in a single day this week, Italian and Tunisian authorities said on Wednesday. The Italian coast guard said in a statement that one of its ships in the area had rescued 121 people after their boat capsized on Tuesday some 50 miles north of Libya. Ten bodies were recovered. Tunisian naval forces rescued all 81 migrants onboard another boat that had started taking on water off near the Tunisian island of Djerba on Tuesday night, the country's defence ministry said.

Rimorchiatori Malta Ltd has announced it has ordered a new $31.5m AHSV type from the Union Naval Valencia. The vessel is designed by Moss Maritime, a Norwegian naval architect forming part of Messrs Saipem, and will be delivered to the Maltese company in March 2010. The vessel is specifically designed to perform offshore activities, living assistance to fixed or floating oil rigs in southern Mediterranean waters. The order will be financed by an Italian Bank, possibly in a pooling arrangement with a Maltese bank. The investment is being made through the company's Maltese subsidiary Menqa Shipping. The vessel will have a dead weight of approximately 2,000 tons with a deck cargo area of 4, 650 sq. ft. and a deck cargo capacity of at least 900 tons.