in.fondo.al.mar / under.the.sea

Brief / Concept

in.fondo.al.mar (under the sea) is an info-visualisation project about a series of sinkings and incidents in the Mediterranean Sea, involving ships which are suspected of having carried toxic and radioactive waste. The project aims at "bringing the poisons afloat", to spread information and to support the ongoing investigations on the case. The site gathers and displays different data available on the incidents and contains a map of the sinkings, a chronology of the incidents, as well as general statistics and individual records about the incidents and the ships involved. in.fondo.al.mar is a work-in-progress project, which will be subject to corrections and updates and welcomes the contributions of users and experts.

Context

They have been called "poison ships", "toxic ships", "disposable ships". They are dozens of commercial vessels, which misteriously sank during the last thirty years in the Mediterranean sea. The Aso foundered in 1979, off the city of Locri in Calabria, in Southern Italy; the Rigel deliberately sunk off Reggio Calabria in 1987, the Marco Polo foundered in the Canal of Sicily in 1993, as well as tens of less known incidents which took place in more recent years.

The suspicion that hovers over these accidents is disturbing. The ships would have been sunk deliberately to dispose of tons of toxic, chemical and radioactive waste. Poisons, for which the producers did not want to pay high cost of legal disposal, and which ended up in the hands of organised crime and ruthless entrepeneurs. Apart from the mafia, in this traffic would have also participated Italian and foreign governments, as well as secret services.

in.fondo.al.mar is an info-visualisation project which aims at preventing this from happening. The site is designed as to make available and manageable a quantity of data regarding the suspicious sinkings in the Mediterranean Sea in the last 30 years. Information which for too long has remained trapped in maritime registers and hard disks, or which is scattered in tens of different dossiers. Information for which the moment has come to be shared and assembled, as it were the pieces of a disquieting mosaic. Employing maps, a chronology and other forms of infographics, the site highlights the existence of suspicious recurrences in the incidents, the sites and times of the sinkings, the cargoes, the flags, and ports of departures and of arrival. Through these means, in.fondo.al.mar aims at providing its users the instruments for navigating these complex data, allowing them to gain a factual understanding of what might really lie down there on the bottom of the sea.