A Millionaire Couple’s Boat Is Saving the Lives of Migrants at Sea

[Omaha Steve]

The duo has spent about $8 million in personal funds on an aid station that provides food, water, and medical care to stranded migrants.



(Photo: Courtesy Migrant Offshore Aid Station)

JUN 23, 2015 Vince Beiser has reported from more than two dozen countries for Wired, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, and others. In 2014 he won the Media for Liberty Award.

Some multimillionaires buy boats and use them for leisurely cruises from one paradisiacal port to the next. Multimillionaires Christopher and Regina Catrambone bought a boat and are using it to save desperate migrants from drowning at sea instead.

As founders of Migrant Offshore Aid Station, the Catrambones have gotten creative with their resources, setting a repurposed fishing vessel outfitted with drones and other high-tech gear sailing around the Mediterranean to seek out and rescue African and Middle Eastern migrants trying to get to Europe in overcrowded and dangerous boats.

So, Why Should You Care? An estimated 22,000 people have died trying to cross from Africa to Europe in the last 14 years, including more than 3,400 last year. The number of migrants continues to climb—100,000 in the last six months alone—as European governments fumble for a way to cope with the crisis. On Monday, the European Union announced it was launching a naval operation to stop migrant traffickers.

Conflict as well as poverty are the key factors for migration: Africans are the largest group among the dead, but the number of Syrians, Libyans, and other Middle Easterners is growing.

FULL story sat link.

[ladjf]

1. That is more like. Way to go good people! nt

[shanti]

2. Very good of them

but i'd be afraid of pirates in those waters, no good deed goes unpunished, and all that