Maritime Incident
- Difficulty
-
medium - Rank
- #142
- Flags
-
9014432Andrea Quondamatteo
During the autumn of 2025, the UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) issued a warning regarding a maritime incident that occurred near the following coordinates: 12.381162, 46.468557.
The cause of the incident, however, could not be determined with certainty.
Question 1
Question
What is the IMO number of the vessel involved?
Seems like a real-case challenge!
We can start by opening the coordinates in Google Maps to see the approximate location. The result is in the middle of the Aden Gulf, near Yemen.
By searching UKMTO recent incidents, we can found the UKMTO recent incidents page listing all recent incidents.
We have 2 points close to the location (#32 on September 23, 2025 and #36 on October 19, 2025), but #32 UKMTO ADVISORY 036-2025 is the closest one, and is in middle of the autumn season.
The description itself doesn’t give much information, so we can Google Search UKMTO ADVISORY 036-2025 to find more information.
One result is from UKMTO’s Twitter noticing about the attack.
When opening the profile, we can go back to the tweet, and found that the nexts posts following this one are updates about this incident. Finally, it concludes with a “Summary Report” about the incidents of the week.
We can open the report link in the tweet.
There’s a table about all incidents of the past week (2 incidents during 18-24 october 2025). The second one (#036-25) is the one we’re looking for.
The “Remarks” column titles contains the IMO number of the vessel involved named “FALCON”.
Answer
9014432
Question 2
Question
In response to the vessel’s distress situation, several assets were deployed to provide assistance, including an aircraft from the French armed forces.
Which officer was in command of the rescue operation?
With previous question, we know the ship is called “FALCON” and we have its IMO. We can search some news about the vessel by searching FALCON 9014432 after:2025-10-18.
Multiple sources like this one quote “EUNAVFOR Aspides” as coordinator of the rescue operation.
Searching EUNAVFOR Aspides gives the website about Aspides operations news.
By going into the “Press Material” tab (Newsroom > Press Material) and filter keyword FALCON between dates 2025-10-18 and 2025-10-31, we found all results concerning this boat.
The last post MV FALCON THIRD UPDATE (October 19th, 2025) gives the details about the rescue operation:
EUNAVFOR ASPIDES, under the coordination of Rear Admiral Andrea Quondamatteo, Force Commander of ASPIDES, has successfully coordinated a SAR (SEARCH AND RESCUE) operation.
Answer
Andrea Quondamatteo