On 14 June 2023, the Adriana,[a] an Italy-bound fishing trawler smuggling migrants, sank in international waters in the part of the Mediterranean known as the Ionian Sea, off the coast of Pylos, Messenia, Greece.

[15][13][16] After the Adriana had sunk "close to the deepest part of the Mediterranean Sea",[17] the HCG and the military initiated a massive search and rescue operation.

[17] According to a February 2023 International Organization for Migration (IOM) report, there were over 706,062 migrants representing 44 nationalities in a hundred Libyan municipalities and the numbers continue to rise.

[30] The IOM declared the Northern Africa to Italy sea route for migrants and refugees seeking to get to Europe as the deadliest on earth, which has recorded 21,000 deaths since 2014.

[33] On 26 February 2023, at least 94 people died when a wooden boat from İzmir, Turkey, sank off Cutro in Southern Italy in the deadliest Mediterranean maritime incident of 2023 up to that point.

[17] Since 2015, when the stream of Middle Eastern, Asian, and African migrants and refugees attempting to enter European Union nations reached its height, Greece became the "main thoroughfare".

[32] With the election of the center-right New Democracy party leader, Kyriakos Mitsotakis as prime minister in 2019 the country took a "harder line" against the tens of thousands of asylum seekers in Greece—often Syrian war refugees.

[37][38] A July 2023 BBC article about the deadly Pylos shipwreck said that there was an increase in international attention to pushbacks in Greek following the New York Times 19 May release of video footage taken on Lesbos, Greece, where 12 asylum seekers, including an infant, were forced into a van, taken by speedboat to a HCG vessel, transferred to an inflatable raft in the Aegean Sea, then abandoned at sea under the hot sun.

[34] The Italy-bound "rusted, aging", overloaded migrant boat was a fishing trawler,[8] named Adriana,[a][41] that was estimated to be around 20 to 30 metres (66 to 98 ft) long.

[42] The Greek newspaper, Kathimerini, had reported on 9 June that smugglers had to convince apprehensive migrants to get on board a boat they thought was incapable of making "the more-than-five-hundred-nautical-mile journey" with hundreds of passengers.

[46][32][4] The Washington Post reported after the tragedy that rescue ship best practice includes the distribution of life jackets via smaller boats.

[4] At 11:00 a.m. (EEST) on 13 June, the Italian coast guard alerted Greek authorities and the European Union (EU) border protection agency, Frontex, of the vessel in distress and also told the HCG that there were two dead children on board, according to the RSA.

[18] Survivors of the shipwreck have stated that a HCG vessel caused the fishing boat to capsize by attempting to tow it at dangerously high speeds despite passengers' cries of distress to stop.

The ship sank around 50 miles (80 km) off the coast of Pylos, Messenia, in the Peloponnese,[32] in an area around 13,000 to 17,000 feet (4,000 to 5,200 m) deep,[43][18] which has been described as being near the "deepest part of the Mediterranean Sea".

[1][32] The Mayan Queen IV, a luxury superyacht, was notified by the HCG to transport 100 of the 104 rescued survivors, as well as recovered bodies, to Kalamata.

[63] Ioannis Sarmas who served in the role of caretaker prime minister for several weeks in 2023 following his appointment 25 May 2023 by President Katerina Sakellaropoulou, announced three days of national mourning.

[56] The Pakistani newspaper Dawn editorialised that "racist laws, anti-migration policies" which aimed to prevent migrants from entering safely and legally were to blame for the deaths of thousands of refugees.

[65] The former US president Barack Obama contrasted the way in which the public turned a "blind eye" to the 14 June Adriana migrant boat tragedy—which received little media attention—with the "obsessive", "minute-by-minute", "twenty-four hour" coverage of the 18 June OceanGate Titan submersible implosion, in which five tourists in the submersible died in their failed attempt to visit the wreckage of the Titanic.

[50] The New York Times,[15] Washington Post,[7] The Guardian,[67] The Conversation, Human Rights Watch,[68] Amnesty International,[69] UNCHR Greece[70] and Refugee Support Aegean (RSA) described the deadly Pylos shipwreck as preventable.

[4] On 19 June, the men, aged between 20 and 40, accused of human smuggling and operating the boat, appeared in a Greek court in Kalamata and pleaded not guilty.

[74] A lawsuit on behalf of 40 survivors has been filed at the Naval Court of Pireaus alleging that Greek authorities failed to protect the lives of those onboard.

[77] In a 28 July 2023 letter addressed to Mitsotakis, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights said that Greece has a "legal obligation to conduct effective investigations into the Pylos shipwreck", which includes fact-finding and the punishment of the persons responsible for hundreds of deaths.

[19] On 14 December 2023, six months after the sinking, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued a joint statement saying that the "nature of ongoing judicial investigations in Greece raises concerns about the prospects for accountability for the shipwreck".

[15] An investigation by the Washington Post retraced the Adriana's route on the Mediterranean Sea and reported that decisions taken by the HCG had contributed to the tragedy.

[7] A joint investigative team of researchers and journalists, including Solomon, the Forensis research group—a sister organisation of Forensic Architecture—The Guardian, Der Spiegel, and the German national broadcaster, ARD[80] examined court documents, sources from the coastguards, as well as survivors' interviews and found evidence contradicting the HCG's original reports.

[23] Other sources for their investigative reporting included "distress signals, videos and photographs by the HCG, Frontex, and nearby commercial vessels as well as logs and testimonies.