page_title: Pia Klemp
section_title: Life and work
hierarchical_section_title: Pia Klemp / Life and work
caption_attribution_description: Captain Pia Klemp on the bridge of Sea-Watch 3. April 7, 2018.
context_page_description: Pia Klemp is a ship captain, animal and human rights activist and author from Germany, who, between 2011 and 2017, worked for the Sea Shepherd organization to participate in many international operations to protect sea animals. Between 2016 and 2018 she commanded two rescue ships in the Mediterranean Sea for the German non-government organizations Jugend Rettet and Sea-Watch during the ongoing European migrant crisis. Her ships rescued about 14 thousand migrants from drowning. Klemp was responsible for the rescue of more than a thousand of them.
  One of her ships, Iuventa, was seized by Italian authorities in 2017, who accused her of cooperating with human traffickers, and claimed many of those saved were at no imminent risk of death. If convicted, she faces 20 years in prison. Her newer ship, Sea-Watch 3 was prevented from departing its dock by Maltese authorities for several months in 2018.
context_section_description: Klemp was born in 1983 in Bonn-Beuel, Germany. She studied biology in Bonn. For two years she worked as a diving instructor and participated in several nature conservation projects in Germany, Thailand and Indonesia.
  In 2011 she joined the marine conservation organization Sea Shepherd, working aboard MY Steve Irwin, MY Bob Barker, MY Sam Simon and MV Brigitte Bardot, for six years in various positions such as cook, rescue diver, deckhand, ship manager and second mate, while gaining her sea captain's patent. During this time she took part in many missions including Operation Relentless and Operation Milagro.
  On 9 June 2015, she founded Aquascope e.V., an organization to develop and utilize surveillance technologies to tackle illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
  With the emerging European migrant crisis since 2015, she switched in 2017 to rescue ship operations in the Mediterranean Sea, commanding Iuventa by the German Jugend Rettet organization in two missions until the ship was seized by Italian authorities on 2 August 2017. Presented at Manifesta 12, a Goldsmiths, University of London-based Forensic Oceanography and Forensic Architecture team of researchers came to the conclusion that the crew of Iuventa neither communicated with nor returned empty boats back to the traffickers.
  Since early November 2017 she was responsible for the first four rescue missions of Sea-Watch 3 near the Libyan coast, after the ship was taken over by the German Sea-Watch organization from Médecins Sans Frontières Spain. On 1 June 2018, Sea-Watch 3 was blocked from leaving the harbour of Valletta by Maltese authorities until October 2018.
  The forthcoming suit in the Iuventa court case forced Klemp to temporarily stop her rescue activities at sea and return to Germany in August 2018.Later that year she founded the group "Solidarity at Sea".
  Klemp is author of the novels Allmende und Schrebergarten (English: "Commons and allotment") and Lass uns mit den Toten tanzen (English: "Let us dance with the dead").
  According to the Guardian, Pia Klemp accepted the offer of street artist and activist Banksy to command the NGO vessel Louise Michel, which departed for its first mission in late August 2020.
caption: Klemp at the bridge of Sea-Watch 3 on 7 April 2018.
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