In a photograph released on Twitter from the Spanish Salvamento Maritimo page, three people can be seen sitting on the helm of the Althini II tanker with their feet less than a meter from the water.
The tweet reads: “This afternoon, the Salvamar Nunki ship rescued three migrants found on the rudder blade of the Althini II ship, anchored between the docks of the port of Las Palmas and coming from Nigeria. They were transferred to the port and treated by the medical services.”
The Maltese-flagged vessel Althini II arrived in Las Palmas on Gran Canaria on Monday after an 11-day voyage from Lagos in Nigeria, according to Marine Traffic, a vessel tracking website.
The Red Cross regional migration manager, Jose Antonio Rodriguez Verona, told Reuters: “Yesterday afternoon around 1900 we were alerted by the Salvamento Maritimo of the position of three people on a boat near the Las Palmas pier. Immediately the ship Salvamar Nunki rescued these three people and transferred them to the port of Arguineguin in serious condition.Once we arrived in Puerto de la Luz we found three people with hypothermia and dehydration after several days at sea.Apparently, they were sailing in suboptimal in the open air, which resulted in hypothermia.”
The Canary Islands are a busy gateway on the route of African migrants to Europe. Spanish data show that seaborne migration to the archipelago increased by 51% in the first five months of the year compared to the previous year. It is not the first time that migrants have been found on the rudders of ships.
The Adviser for Migration of the regional government of the Canary Islands, Txema Santana, explained: “These people arrived on the rudder of a large ship. It is not the first time nor the last, it is something we have seen several times in the Canary Islands. Over the past five years we have seen people come sit on that rudder blade, we have seen one or more people together. We have to say that what you see in the picture is not all the space they have, there is the rudder and a small cubicle where they sometimes rotate to protect themselves”.
