Vito Fiorino and his friends were preparing to go fishing after sleeping the night on his boat docked off Lampedusa when one of them, Alessandro, heard piercing screams. It was about 6am on 3 October 2013. The group often ventured out to sea on the abandoned boat that Fiorino had brought back to life after moving to the tiny Sicilian island a few years earlier. But rarely would they spend the night.
“It was a dark night with lots of stars, no wind and a beautiful sea, and so we decided to sleep on the boat, something we hadn’t done in years,” Fiorino said. “Alessandro got the boat going as dawn broke and after a few metres stopped the engine and asked: ‘Did you hear that noise?’ He used a Sicilian word which means ‘cries of anguish’. There was a huge flock of seagulls so I was convinced that the noise was coming from them.”
