Carola Rackete, Foto © Till M. Egen Carola Rackete
Captain Carola Rackete, born in 1988, studied at the Maritime Academy in Elsfleth, then studied nature management in Ormskrik, England, sailed the Meteor and the Polarstern on the research ships, the Greenpeace Arctic Sunrise and other ships for the British Antarctic Survey. Since 2016 she has been working in her spare time on the ships and planes of NGO’s (e.g. Sea Watch) that save people on the Mediterranean Sea. In June 2019 she ignored the Italian government’s ban on mooring and brought forty refugees – fished out of the Mediterranean – into the port of Lampedusa. Her arrest became world news and her ship, the Sea Watch 3, has since become a symbol for those who no longer wish to stand by and watch as human lives are systematically prevented from being saved.