Italian Navy Commander recalls 'devastating' memories of his year rescuing migrants
More than 340,000 asylum seekers have arrived Europe's shores so far this year. More than 4,000 are known to have died on the journey.
And when call for help comes across the coast guard's radio it's people like Commander Massimo Tozzi who comes to the rescue.
Commander Tozzi was captain of the Italian rescue ship Cigala Fulgosi from 2014 to 2015 which was featured in the documentary, Fire at Sea.
He tells The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti about his mission to save refugees from rafts that should contain a maximum of 20 people but include over 100 people desperate for a new life.
"Try to imagine this situation …. They are at sea. The engines off. They are completely drifting. You see so many people. Inflatable rafts overcrowded, only few of them have life jackets. There are no systems of communication. They have no water."
"So we have to intervene," Tozzi says. "We have to bring them on board on our ship."
He tells Tremonti that while there are many emotions involved in a rescue, there are too many things that need to be done, "you can't waste time."
Commander Tozzi has been in the Italian military for 25 years and says the experience of rescuing people from sea has changed him.
"I had personal ideas about migration before being the Captain, [they] were very clear ideas... Now many of these ideas have changed, have been modified."
One rescue operation on Aug. 15, 2015, particularly stands out for Commander Tozzi. It involved a wooden boat with about 400 people on board.
At the end of the day, only 320 migrants were saved.
"On the ship below deck, we found 49 bodies without life. Corpses," he recalls.
Captain Tozzi believes they died choking on gas fumes enclosed in such a small space on the ship.
It was devastating, he tells Tremonti, when he saw the amount of bodies, one on top of each other.
"It was not possible to count them. It wasn't possible."
Listen to the full conversation at the top of this web post.
This segment was produced by The Current's Ines Colabrese.