Our professional and specialist crew is an important part of what makes MOAS the field-leading organization it has become. We are proud of our team on the front lines and we are constantly getting questions about the kind of people we have on board and the various positions they fill. This new weekly profile will introduce you to members of our team and give you an insight into their background and role on board.
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This week we have look through the window into the life of our Able Bodied Seaman, Ryan.
„I’m Ryan and I am an AB on board the MOAS vessel Responder.
The role is very varied and includes things like standing watch to look for vessels in need of assistance, deploying and recovering the rescue craft and participating in the embarkation procedures when people come on board the Responder after a rescue. This involves security searches, removing lifejackets, getting the people in order and settling them down.
Once everyone is safely on board, I take care of general security and make sure everyone is safe and secure and their needs are being met. We continue to do this until they either transfer onto another vessel or are disembarked at a safe port, like Italy, and we hand over to the land-based services there.
When I am out on board the FRDC during rescues I perform basic seaman duties such as handling lines. I assist when the swimmer is away by helping to throw lines to him or keeping watch for him, and hand out lifejackets to the people we are rescuing. I then help bring people on board and sit them down and keep them calm until they get to the Responder.
See Ryan at work in the video below:
Doing the job of an AB with MOAS is quite different from jobs I have had in the past. I have experience of working on a lot of different types of small vessels, but none that operated in a rescue capacity. Before, my work solely involved typical seaman duties – for example, handling lines and operating small vessels – but no rescues. I also have a background working on merchant vessels in a security role, which involved no typical duties of an able-bodied seaman, which I do here. My work on the MOAS vessels is much more action-packed.
A couple of weeks ago we had a pretty intense rescue. There were several rescues over the course of the day, and in about 12 hours I found myself operating through the gamut of my roles and responsibilities. I helped embarking migrants, I was on board the FRDC recovering bodies, I was helping to do CPR on migrants in the recovery room – I ran through all my duties in the course of the day. We haven’t had a day like that before. Usually, during a rescue, each AB or swimmer goes through a selection of duties from his typical day-to-day role, not through each of those possibilities at once.“
If you have a question for Ryan, or the rest of our team, simply #AskMOAS on social media. For all the MOAS news and updates sign up to our newsletter at the bottom of this page. Finally, support our rescue missions by giving whatever you can to help us save lives at sea.